Economic cooperation between Shaanxi province in Northeast China and Southwest China's Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macao has grown increasingly strong in recent years, and has brought significant benefits to all sides.
Those benefits were highlighted during the eighth Shaanxi-Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Economic Cooperation Week, which kicked off last Saturday and will run through this Saturday.
Duan Yongan, an official from Shaanxi Provincial Department of Commerce, said the number of business exhibitors at the event hit a record high this year.
According to the Shaanxi provincial government, one of the event organizers, Hong Kong investors are now among the largest groups to invest in Shaanxi. Official data shows that by the end of 2017, Hong Kong people invested in 2,723 projects in Shaanxi, with a total investment value of $27.27 billion.
In the same period, Shaanxi invested in a total of $220 million in Hong Kong, accounting for 48 percent of the province's total investment outside the Chinese mainland.
To date, Shaanxi province has invested a total of 70 companies in Hong Kong, worth a total $2.7 billion.
In addition, the tourism sector is also a highlight of the mutual collaboration. Last year, there were 438,600 tourists from Hong Kong traveling to Shaanxi, an increase of 10.8 percent over the previous year.
A total of 484 projects were signed during the past seven sessions of Shaanxi-Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Economic Cooperation Week, bringing in 638.45 billion yuan ($91.68 billion) in combined investment value. Of that total, 146 projects have been completed and 163 remain under construction, according to the organizer.
Previous sessions of the event have boosted the development of Shaanxi and helped along its development, according to the organizer, and Shaanxi will continue to see new progress through cooperation with Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, with the aim of maximizing its potential in economic development.
Hong Kong is also one of the top five trading partners with Shaanxi. The main commodities exported to Hong Kong include jewelry, electricity-power transmission equipment, wireless communications equipment, hard disk drives and data processing machines and components.
The products imported from Hong Kong mainly consist of semiconductor components and data processing equipment parts.
Besides Hong Kong, Macao has been playing an important role in the economic development of Shaanxi, according to an official.
Macao has invested in 73 Shaanxi projects, 1.17 percent of the total number of projects in the province.
Shaanxi and Macao are both key tourist destinations with distinctive advantages in location, resources and tourism attractions.
The number of Macao tourists visiting Shaanxi is also seeing growth year by year. In 2017, 260,200 came to Shaanxi, an increase of 7.18 percent over the same period the previous year.
As one of the key activities of the eighth Shaanxi-Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Economic Cooperation Week, an exhibition of Shaanxi's renowned products was held in Guangzhou.
The exhibition, covering 5,000 square meters, attracted more than 200 exhibitors, displaying the leading cultural and tourist attractions, cutting-edge technology, advanced manufacturing, as well as Shaanxi cuisine.
"Although my family and I have never gotten the chance to visit Shaanxi, I became a fan of Shaanxi's products at a promotions activity," said Mei Donghua, a Guangzhou resident who said the exhibition was a dream come true.
Mei said that she hopes Shaanxi will hold more of such exhibitions in Guangzhou and bring more of the province's special products to the city. She also expressed a desire for specialty product stores in Guangzhou featuring authentic Shaanxi products.
Another Guangzhou visitor said he was very interested in Shaanxi cuisine as well as its history and culture, and made a special point of tasting authentic Shaanxi snacks at the exhibition.
"Shaanxi has made great progress in electronics technology. It is also amazing that some other famous and excellent products made in the province, especially electronic products, have already taken the lead in the whole country," he said.
