Driven by its powerful private economy, Guangdong province has experienced remarkable development over the past three decades.
Its GDP reached more than 3 trilion yuan last year, accounting for one-eighth of the country's total.
That exceeded Singapore, and China's Hong Kong and Taiwan regions, which along with South Korea are known as the "four small dragons of Asia".
The per capita GDP of Guangdong last year hit $4,000.
One of the reasons for its success is that Guangdong authorities attached equal importance to both State-owned and private enterprises.
Private businesses, including household firms, numbered more than three million last year that produced 1.2 trillion yuan in industrial output value and paid 160 billion yuan in taxes last year.
Some experts said the private economy is slowing after the heady years of the 1980s and '90s, when the private economy grew between 20 percent and 30 percent annually.
In some years, it even expanded by 50 percent, but growth has dropped to less than 20 percent in recent years.
The golden period for the private economy was at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s when a large number of private enterprises started business operations.
Yet after more than 10 years of growth, most of the businesses are still small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generating less than 100 million yuan in output value annually.
In Foshan, a booming industrial city near Guangzhou, 90 percent of the private enterprises are SMEs.
Another concern about private enterprises is that most exist for a very short time. Research by the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences found that private firms only operate for five years on average.
Realizing these problems, the authorities of Guangdong recently moved to give more support to the private sector.
One example is import and export businesses that today find it easier to gain approval and licenses.
At the beginning of this year, a regulation for the development of private firms was released by the provincial government.
The regulation requires all local governments across the province to pay more attention to the growth of SMEs.
As part of the regulation, the provincial government established a special fund for the development of SMEs.
Smaller private businesses enjoy favorable policies in taxes, finance and land use.
The government also encourages SMEs to shift away from labor-intensive industries to hi-tech sectors, which are good for sustainable growth.
In the face of the global financial crisis, the provincial government approved a 10 billion yuan financial aid package for SMEs in early December.
One billion yuan is earmarked for technology innovation and government guarantees for bank loans, and 200 million yuan be used to help enterprises expand exports.
The on-going global recession, especially in the United States and Europe, major markets of Guangdong-produced commodities, has badly hit the exports of the province as well as the rest of the country.
Source: China Daily
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