S. China's province solicits proposals from foreign advisors on sustainable development

Guangdong Province, an economic powerhouse in southern China, invited Thursday 12 foreign advisors to offer proposals to help the province realize sustainable development.

The experts, who will advise Governor of Guangdong Huang Huahua, are mostly from multinational corporations and experts and scholars. They include Richard R. Goodmanson, executive vice president and chief operating officer of US-based DuPont, Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of the Sweden-based Ericsson, and Patrizio Bianchi, president of the University of Ferrara of Italy.

They will have a one-day closed-door meeting with ranking provincial officials on sustainable development - a popular notion in China today - at Guangdong 's International Consultative Conference on the Future Economic Development of Guangdong ( ICCFED), which opened here Thursday.

The conference highlighting such topics as technological innovation, industrial upgrades, recycling, environmental protection, education and human resources.

Since 1999, Guangdong has been inviting foreign advisors to give opinions and suggestions for the economic growth of the province, which is now a practice commonly seen in quite a few provinces of China, like east China's Zhejiang province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in the south.

"Opinions and proposals from advisors have helped broaden the visions of the government of Guangdong and improved policy in recent years," Huang told the opening ceremony of ICCFED.

After the previous meeting in 2003, Huang said, Guangdong has studied proposals made by the advisors and adopted some of them in certain projects and policies.

For instance, Guangdong has adopted a proposal from Ericsson on establishing a research center of 3G service platform and set up a world-level research and development software design center.

Guangdong has also invited 11 foreign principals of multinational corporations to attend the ICCFED and discuss economic and trade cooperation and investment, like BP Group, Emerson Electric Company, Motorola and Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies.

"The ICCFED has promoted exchanges and cooperation between Guangdong and the organizations represented by advisors," Huang said.

So far, Japan's Honda Ltd. has invested nearly 300 million US dollars in Guangdong with eight projects; BP's investment in the province has amounted to 1 billion US dollars with a yearly growth of 150 million US dollars in recent years; and Shell has invested 4.3 billion US dollars in Guangdong and its petrochemical project in the province will be going into operation before the end of this year.

"The ICCFED not only promotes Guangdong's reputation and influence overseas and enhanced overseas businesses' confidence in making investments in Guangdong, but also has elevated multinational corporations' reputation in China," Huang said.

Statistics show Guangdong has established trade exchanges with more than 200 countries and regions worldwide. Its foreign trade reached 357.1 billion US dollars in 2004, taking up one third of the country's total.

Source: Xinhua