Guangzhou Mayor Wen Guohui held a press conference after the annual session of the city's legislature concluded on January 19th, answering questions regarding Guangzhou's blueprint for this year, some highlights are as follows:

Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area

As one of the central cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou has undertaken many projects such as the establishment of eight teams specializing in cooperation on environmental protection, tourism among other areas.

Also, the city has seen many breakthroughs in infrastructure development, cooperation platforms. For instance, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) opened in September, 2018 and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has confirmed it will establish its Guangzhou campus in Nansha.

In 2019, Guangzhou will play a more important role in the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and promoting opening-up. "We will also jointly build a science and technology innovation corridor between Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macao, to facilitate industrial upgrade in the Greater Bay Area," said Wen.

In terms of industry cooperation, Guangzhou plans to increase input on the development of new generation of information technology, artificial intelligence, biomedicine and new energy, new materials and other strategic emerging industries.

Opening-up

Guangzhou is paying a great deal of attention on promoting reform and innovation, now some institutional systems and regulatory models have been launched to link with international investment trade rules such as the foreign company online approval service system.

To participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, Guangzhou will help more local enterprises to go global this year, and launch more international freight rail services.

Furthermore the city will enhance international production capacity cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road, and improve economic and trade cooperation with countries in Southeast Asia and other regions.

Guangzhou will also improve the negative list management model for foreign investment and further the opening-up of the real economy. Meanwhile, new patterns of foreign trade such as cross-border e-commerce and parallel importing of cars are being encouraged to grow.

Better business environment

In recent years, Guangzhou has kept improving its business environment, “In the future, we will make efforts to make Guangzhou become the top choice for investment in and development of global enterprises,” said Chen.

The city will further reform in business environment, investment facilitation, trade facilitation, registration of real estate, tax payment and many other fields to provide more convenient services for enterprises and citizens.

In addition, the city plans to ease market access for those companies from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan in industries like education, culture and medical treatment.

The cost of running businesses will also be reduced, such as the cost of land, electricity and logistics. Regarding intellectual property right protection, the government will continue to crack down on infringement and counterfeiting.

Reported by Will

Edited by Simon