Huang Huahua, Governor of Guangdong Province, visits the  Guangdong Industrial Technology Achievement Exhibition held in Guangzhou yesterday (Nov 20th).

Tong Xing, Vice Govenor of Guangdong Province, delivers speech on the opening ceremony of Guangdong Industrial Technology Achievement Exhibition (2001-2005) in Guangzhou yesterday (Nov 20th).

To switch its rail from "Made in Guangdong" to "Create in Guangdong", Guangdong will spare no efforts to develop industrial technology, said Huang Huahua, Governor of Guangdong Province, during the opening ceremony of Guangdong Industrial Technology Achievement Exhibition (2001-2005) in Guangzhou yesterday (Nov 20th).

Huang said that the fund for technology R&D would be further increased and the from-result-to-product transition shall be improved in the future.

From 2001 to 2005, Guangdong's input in industrial technology innovation increased by 15 percent annually and the total fund added up to 25 billion RMB (about 3.17 billion USD). Its industrial technology achievements had made great contribution towards the development of the province's overall economy. The value added of technology industry hit 225 billion RMB (about 28.56 billion USD) in 2005, 3.3 times increase compared that in 2000.

During the 10th Five Years, Guangdong government gave great support to 674 key technology innovation projects. When the R&D results were applied to mass production, these projects yielded sales value of 213.7 billion RMB (about 27.13 billion USD), and tax of 7.2 billion RMB (about 914 million USD).

Meanwhile, Guangdong set up 27 state-level and 133 province-level enterprise research centers, helping the enterprises to make technology innovation their core competitiveness.

The exhibition mainly show the Guangdong's technology achievements during the 10th five years on seven aspects, they are technology innovation, technology improvement, industrial design, enterprises' research center, equipment manufacturing, famous brands, and industrial clusters.

[Trends] The Transition from Manufacturer to Creator

Building an innovative Guangdong by 2020

Building "innovative capacity" is more than just a trendy phrase in China today. The country as a whole has launched projects to create innovation systems in the past few years. Guangdong is also making efforts to its transition from a "manufacturing" powerhouse to an expert in "creating".

Guangdong's manufacturing sector is known as being capable of making OEM products and other low-end products, which has helped the region experience rapid economic development in the past 20 years. However, after two decades of development, "low price" still seems to be the only advantage most factories in the province own today. These factories have poor R&D ability and process few core technologies so there are little chance for them to develop into influential enterprises that have high-end products and famous labels.

For example, Guangdong is a big manufacturer and exporter of DVD. For each DVD, which is priced at 39 USD, Guangdong manufacturer needs to pay 19.7 USD to foreign enterprises that owned DVD-related patents. Moreover, Guangdong manufacturer need to import all the important parts, which accounts for 70 percent of the total production cost. The DVD manufacturing industry is low profitable. Guangdong toy factory earns 0.35 USD for producing one Barbie, which is sold at 9.9 USD in foreign markets. Source reveals that the foreign enterprises that own the labels of the products manufactured in Guangdong gain 90 percent of the profit.

Guangdong officials began seeking mode switches some years ago. They employed "lighten the province's heavy dependence on low-end products exports" as short-term plan and adopted "enhance innovative capacity so as to stimulate industrial upgrades" to secure long-term development. >>>Details

Editor: Donald