21st Century Business Herald reporter Peng Minjing reported from Zhuhai
Zhuhai is a city with its own “Internet celebrity gene”.
From the most beautiful “Lovers Road”, which is famous in the country, to Zhuhai Chimelong, which receives tens of millions of tourists every year; From the country’s first island theater “Riyue Bei”, to the “Seven Wonders of the New World” Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, and the biennial scramble air show… Zhuhai has always been a “poetry and distance” yearned for by tourists from all over the world.
“Zhuhai is a wonderful city, like a magnet, you don’t want to leave when you come.” After graduating from Zhuhai University, Jack stayed here to start a business and opened a café. On weekends, he calls on friends to drive to Qiao Island for camping and cookouts, “It’s full of life, morning tea and night market have their own style.” ”
Since the establishment of the country’s first “three to one supplement” enterprise, Zhuhai has become a “window” and “test field” for reform and opening up, and has repeatedly pioneered the national custom. As one of the first special economic zones in China, Zhuhai has successively landed the first Sino-foreign joint venture hotel in the country, Shijingshan Tourism Center, established the country’s first cross-border industrial zone, and set a precedent for rewarding scientific and technological talents in science and technology, and exuding the urban gene of “attracting talents and attracting wisdom” from its bones.
With the implementation of the Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, Zhuhai has ushered in new opportunities, and more global attention has turned to it. For more than 40 years, Zhuhai has been at the forefront of the times and has gained many shining city business cards – China’s top ten charming cities, national civilized cities, national garden cities, China’s happiest cities…
At the end of October this year, under the guidance of Southern Finance All-Media Group, it was jointly released by 21st Century Business Herald, 21st Finance Client, 21st Century Innovation Capital Research Institute, and Tencent Cloud
In the “China Chao Economy 2021 Top 100 Internet Red Cities List”, Zhuhai ranked 3rd in Guangdong Province, second only to Shenzhen and Guangzhou, and ranked 25th in the country. Among them, in the sub-evaluation of “Chao Life Index” and “Impression Index”, Zhuhai is particularly prominent, ranking 5th and 15th in the country.
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From seaside gardens to “tide play” sanctuaries:
Zhuhai’s Chao Life Index ranks 1st in Guangdong and 5th in China
Zhuhai is even more “tidal” than you think.
In the “China Chao Economy 2021 Top 100 Internet Red Cities List”,
Zhuhai’s “Chao Life Index” ranks 5th among mainland cities in the country and 1st in Guangdong Province, with tea shops, coffee shops, cinemas, bookstores per million people and other important weather vanes representing leisure trend consumption, and the score ranking is far ahead, surpassing Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
Such genes have endowed Zhuhai with a distinctive business card – leisure and romance, which also benefits from its unique urban environment and practical urban development strategy.
As the city with the largest ocean area, the largest number of islands and the longest coastline in the Pearl River Delta, Zhuhai’s first urban master plan in history proposes to build the “South China Sea Seaside Garden City”. Especially when the cities in the Pearl River Delta are immersed in the development of industry, Zhuhai resolutely invested heavily in the construction of Lovers Road under the condition of weak financial resources to create Zhuhai’s city business card.
In the early 80s of last century, when the special zone was first built, the seaside from Xiangzhou to Gongbei was full of endless desert beaches. In the eyes of the planners and builders of the year, the 55-kilometer-long Lovers Road was not only a road, but also changed the way of life of Zhuhai people. “It leads people to the sea, makes this young SEZ vibrant and vibrant, gives this coastal city a romantic temperament, and highlights the spirit of the pioneers of the Zhuhai SEZ who emancipate their minds and innovate.” Gao Zhaohe, the first director of the Zhuhai Planning Bureau, recalled.
This 55-kilometer road, once known as “China’s most beautiful road”, every holiday, many tourists from all over the country flock to come, an average of more than 100 film and television dramas are filmed in and around Lovers Road every year. In the future, with the completion of the “Sun Moon Shell” Zhuhai Grand Theater, Zhuhai Art Festival and other venues, the new needs and expectations of the spiritual and cultural life of Zhuhai people have also been met.
“Sun Moon Shell” Zhuhai Grand Theater / Tuworm
Today’s Zhuhai is full of youthful vitality: from the audience participating in the Zhuhai Air Show, the Pan Pearl River Delta Super Racing Festival and the WTA Tennis Super Classic, from the participation in the China International Circus Festival, Zhuhai International Beach Music Festival and other international top events, countless young people have come here, and Zhuhai has become a new leisure and entertainment mecca.
In the tide of the times, Zhuhai’s “net red gene” is also constantly iterating. At present, projects such as OCT Phoenix Valley, Songcheng Performing Arts, and Chimelong Phase 2 have landed in Zhuhai, and there will be more “net red” attractions to bless.
From a small border county to an important city in the Bay Area:
Zhuhai-style “10,000 high-rise buildings from the ground”, per capita GDP ranked second in the province
The other side of knowing how to create and enjoy leisure is the daring of Zhuhai people to fight, which can be confirmed by the great changes in Zhuhai’s economic development.
Data show that Zhuhai has achieved leapfrog economic growth in the past 40 years, with its GDP increasing from 261 million yuan when it was established in 1980 to 348.194 billion yuan in 2020. In the first three quarters of this year, Zhuhai’s GDP was 275.631 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.1%.
According to the “2021 Guangdong Statistical Yearbook”, in 2020, there are four cities in Guangdong with a per capita GDP of more than 100,000 yuan, namely Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Foshan, and Zhuhai ranked second in Guangdong with 145,600 yuan. It is worth noting that
The gap between Zhuhai and Shenzhen, which ranked first, has narrowed to 13,600 yuan from 27,900 yuan the previous year.
These economic achievements are inseparable from the support of industry, and the description of Zhuhai’s industrial development must be “tall buildings rise from the ground” to be appropriate.
Looking back, Zhuhai’s agricultural output value was far greater than that of industry, and even a small border county with “one street, one grain station, one factory, and one restaurant.” It was from here that Zhuhai started and overcame difficulties in the process of China’s reform and opening up, leaping into a modern coastal city and becoming a key node city in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, showing the charm of accumulation to the fullest.
Back in 1980, at the beginning of the establishment of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone, there was only one Xiangzhou woolen factory in Zhuhai’s well-known enterprises. This woolen mill invested by Cao Guangbiao, the “Hong Kong wool spinning king”, opened a woolen mill in Zhuhai, the first of its kind of “contract processing” and “compensation trade”, explored the way from Zhuhai, and activated the boom of domestic “three to one supplement” enterprises to attract investment.
Zhuhai has never been satisfied with relying solely on the introduction of foreign investment, and has always planned the road of independent innovation. Because the people of Zhuhai know that in order to achieve “overtaking on curves”, it is necessary to shift the driving force of economic development to the track of relying on scientific and technological progress. As a result, a long-brewing “big change” shocked the whole country.
In 1992, Zhuhai was the first in the country to award scientific and technological workers with a million bonus, and attracted a large number of scientific and technological personnel, scientific and technological achievements and funds at home and abroad to settle in Zhuhai. According to incomplete statistics, Zhuhai introduced 28 science and technology enterprises that year, with a total investment of 600 million yuan.
That year, Zhuhai received more than 1,000 letters from home and abroad, of which more than 500 were from overseas students. The “92 golden generation” such as Qiu Bojun, Lei Jun, and Dong Mingzhu also started from Zhuhai, and their stories still influence entrepreneurs across the country.
Thanks to this, Zhuhai has accumulated huge scientific and technological innovation energy. By the end of 2020, the total number of high-tech enterprises in Zhuhai exceeded 2,200, the total number of technology-based business incubators and public innovation spaces reached 71, there were more than 100 provincial and municipal innovation and entrepreneurship teams, and 12 municipal academician workstations.
According to the “China Urban Science and Technology Innovation Development Report 2020”, Zhuhai ranked second among the 289 Chinese urban science and technology innovation development index rankings in 2020; In order of city size, Zhuhai ranked first among 96 medium-sized cities.
Today, Zhuhai is actively participating in the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area International Science and Technology Innovation Center, transforming from “Made in Zhuhai” to “Intelligent Manufacturing in Zhuhai”, and a number of high-precision “Zhuhai Intelligent Manufacturing” such as Obit “Zhuhai No. 1” and AVIC General Flight “Kunlong” AG600 demonstrate Zhuhai’s “new forces”.
△On September 28, 2021, the 13th China International Aerospace Expo opened in Zhuhai/Visual China
At the same time, Zhuhai is accelerating the cultivation of five 100-billion-level industrial clusters focusing on integrated circuits, biomedicine, new materials, new energy and high-end printing equipment, continuing to expand advanced manufacturing industries such as aerospace and marine engineering equipment manufacturing, and promoting the construction of Zhuhai’s modern industrial system to a new level with new competitive advantages.
According to Sun Bushu, vice president of the South China Urban Research Association and founder of Urban War, Zhuhai is expected to “counterattack”. “According to Zhuhai’s urban positioning, it should be the ‘third pole’ after Guangzhou and Shenzhen, shouldering the mission of driving the development of the west bank of the Pearl River.”
“Youthful” and “age-appropriate” coexist:
The growth rate of permanent population has ranked first in the country for three consecutive years
The first-of-its-kind policy has made Zhuhai a hot spot for scientific and technological talents and entrepreneurs across the country. In the current environment of intensifying “robbery wars” between cities, Zhuhai has never relaxed.
As a major hardcore indicator of the “China Chao Economy • 2021 Top 100 Internet Red Cities List”, the “City Vitality Index” mainly measures the vitality of a city from three aspects: economic strength, population attractiveness and transportation convenience, and Zhuhai has won the 43rd in the country and the 6th in Guangdong.
At present, although the total population of Zhuhai is small, its rapid growth rate in recent years is definitely one of the brightest stars among the cities in the Pearl River Delta.
According to the statistics of 21 Data Journalism Lab, the growth rate of Zhuhai’s permanent population in the past three years has reached 38.19%, ranking second in Guangdong Province and second only to Shenzhen.
According to Zhuhai’s previous plan, by 2035, Zhuhai’s permanent population will reach 5 million, rising to the rank of megacities.
According to the Communiqué of the Seventh National Population Census of Guangdong Province, 74.12% of Zhuhai’s permanent population is aged 15 to 59.
From the perspective of the city’s population and educational background, Zhuhai is the third largest city in Guangdong Province with a college degree or above, second only to Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Specifically, 28,849 people per 100,000 people in Shenzhen have university education, 27,277 in Guangzhou and 25,752 in Zhuhai. This means that Zhuhai not only has a young “population”, but also has a high proportion of “talents”.
In fact, Zhuhai has always regarded talents as the most valuable “first resource”, from rewarding scientific and technological talents to introducing the “Zhuhai Talent Plan”, since the implementation of the plan for three years, Zhuhai has introduced 260,000 new talents of various types, and the talent inflow rate has ranked first in the province for three consecutive years.
During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, Zhuhai also plans to add 400,000 new talents, bringing the total number of talents to 1 million.
At the same time, Zhuhai provides a series of supporting measures to attract talents. For example, after being identified, talents in Zhuhai can enjoy 60% and 50% discounts on the rent and selling price of talent housing according to the same type of market commodity housing of the same type in the same area; During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, Zhuhai will raise 80,000 sets of affordable housing and talent housing, and in 2022, it will raise 16,000 sets of affordable housing and talent housing to solve the problem of industrial talent housing difficulties.
From the perspective of youth, Zhuhai is a city of talent. From the perspective of aging, Zhuhai is also a happy city.
In the latest issue of the “China Large and Medium-sized Cities Healthy Aging Index Report”, Zhuhai’s pension level ranked first among 38 large and medium-sized cities. Thanks to the cultural tourism resources, living environment and transportation indicators, Zhuhai’s “age-appropriate” ranks first in the country, laying a strong foundation for migratory bird-style old-age care.
The heat of the city also reflects the temperature of people’s livelihood. Data show that in 2020, Zhuhai’s people’s livelihood expenditure accounted for 68.1% of the general public budget expenditure. This year, Zhuhai also launched the “micro-facts of people’s livelihood” work, investing 300 million yuan to solve the urgent, difficult and troublesome things around citizens, and solve the long-standing pain points, difficulties and blocking points in public services.
It is believed that Zhuhai, a “net red city”, will still be at the forefront of the trend in the future.
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Design/Wang Bing
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Design/Wang Bing