Against the backdrop of China’s accelerated construction of a “dual-circulation” development paradigm and its concentrated efforts to promote high-quality development, the rapid formation of new-quality productive forces is not only the key for Guangxi to seize the initiative in development and overcome multifarious risks and challenges, but also the practical lever for fully implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping’s major policy directives for the region.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that “Guangxi’s development potential lies in opening-up, and its sustained momentum likewise lies in opening-up.” Expanding opening-up to both the domestic and international arenas is therefore a vital route for Guangxi to foster new-quality productive forces. On the one hand, Guangxi borders the vast southwestern hinterland, adjoins the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, and faces Southeast Asia, endowing it with distinctive locational advantages. Amid the current round of global industrial-chain reconfiguration, the spatial redistribution of industrial chains is exhibiting pronounced tendencies toward regionalization, localization, and fragmentation. For Guangxi, opportunities outweigh challenges; the region should seize this window by pursuing higher-standard opening-up, actively participating in the global division of labor, and realizing industrial upgrading and development. On the other hand, compared with China’s more developed provinces, Guangxi’s economic foundations remain relatively weak, and its overall level of scientific and technological innovation is still low. This necessitates that Guangxi boldly and skillfully open itself to domestic and international markets, attract factors of production, expand market size, and leverage high-caliber resources to propel leapfrog development in innovation, industry, and the economy as a whole.

By expanding internal and external opening-up to cultivate new-quality productive forces, Guangxi should concentrate its efforts in the following four domains.

1. Deepen innovation-led development through opening-up. Enterprises must embed a development philosophy centered on scientific and technological innovation. Local firms should be supported and guided to increase R&D expenditure and to establish collaborative relationships with universities and research institutes both within and beyond the region, as well as overseas. Encourage Guangxi-based enterprises to “go global” and “bring in,” actively integrating into global innovation networks and broadening their innovation horizons. By improving and enforcing the intellectual-property protection regime, the market-access system, and the social-credit system, accelerate the formation of an effective knowledge-transfer and technology-transformation mechanism.

2. Broaden financial support through opening-up. Through policy guidance and financial innovation, attract greater social capital and financial institutions into pivotal sectors and critical links, thereby achieving efficient alignment between capital chains and industrial chains. Optimize financial services to reduce corporate financing costs; make full use of policy instruments such as the Technological Innovation Re-lending Facility to strengthen support for innovative small and medium-sized enterprises and to accelerate industrial-structure optimization and upgrading.

3. Advance industrial upgrading through opening-up. On the one hand, attract talent and intellectual resources from home and abroad to carry out technological transformation and model innovation, raise the added value of products and services, and promote the upgrading of traditional industries within the region. On the other hand, actively explore domestic and overseas markets to facilitate the development of emerging industries such as specialty agriculture, culture-tourism & wellness, new energy, and advanced materials. Finally, the government should adopt a global perspective in strengthening industrial planning, and chart a forward-looking layout for strategic emerging industries and future industries. At the current stage, Guangxi should vigorously introduce and cultivate “lighthouse factories” and “unicorn enterprises”. The former represent the current pinnacle of intelligent manufacturing, whereas the latter possess formidable innovative capacity and growth potential. The demonstration and spillover effects of such enterprises can propel upstream and downstream firms along the industrial chain toward digital and intelligent transformation, thereby elevating the overall standard of the sector.

4. Accumulate talent through opening-up. Sustain long-term and stable investment in applied basic research and talent cultivation, and construct a stratified, well-ordered talent-development system. Fully exploit policies related to the construction of the China  Pilot Free Trade Zone, facilitate talent mobility, intensify efforts to attract high-caliber talent from both domestic and international sources, optimize the environment for talent development and for innovation and entrepreneurship, and retain outstanding personnel.

(Reprinted from the "Two Sessions Focus: Experts' Opinions" column, Page 006, Guangxi Daily, March 5, 2024.)