Overseas Chinese contribute to and benefit from nation's opening-up

Guangdong, a pacesetter of the country's reform and opening-up in South China, has encouraged all parts of the province to harness overseas Chinese resources and help build a strategic fulcrum of the new development pattern.

Since the beginning of this year, the local government has been implementing an action plan to help overseas Chinese achieve high-quality development. The action plan has 16 measures in five aspects including culture, economy, the building of service platforms and preferential policies.

Guangdong has also hosted a series of overseas Chinese-related activities to demonstrate China's latest development progress and boost opportunities for trade and economic cooperation.

These activities are represented by the Overseas Chinese Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Conference. They also include a world business conference, an international overseas Chinese trade fair and a startup congress.

From May 16 to 18, the Bay Area conference was held in Jiangmen city. It was organized by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and the Guangdong provincial government.

The event also set up online venues in 11 countries and regions, including Malaysia, Thailand, South Africa, Canada, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, and China's Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

About 700 people from 90 countries and regions were invited to the conference to observe the development of the Bay Area and tap opportunities for business, investment, employment and education. Some of them also attended the recent 10th Conference for Friendship of Overseas Chinese Associations in Beijing.

Guests included more than 100 overseas Chinese youth from 38 countries and regions, with the youngest one being only 25 years old. They are involved in the fields of trade and economy, politics, sci-tech, culture, education and media.

Huang Kunming, Party secretary of Guangdong, said during the conference that generations of overseas Chinese have made important and unique contributions to Guangdong's construction, reform and opening-up over the past few years.

In the new era, they have been participating in the construction of the Bay Area and the comprehensive promotion of rural vitalization. "Overseas Chinese have served as an important force to promote the high-quality development of Guangdong, as well as key participants, supporters and witnesses of the construction of the Bay Area," he added.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu delivered a video speech saying that Hong Kong has striven to serve the needs of the country through its strengths.

In April, a delegation from the HKSAR government and the Legislative Council toured four Chinese mainland cities in the Bay Area, visiting projects in such sectors as sci-tech innovation, environmental protection, youth development, culture and arts.

"We are very pleased to build consensus with all the mainland cities in the Bay Area, and deepen practical cooperation and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results," he said.

Macao Chief Executive Ho Iat-seng said the Macao SAR government has strengthened the tourism and leisure industry, and vigorously promoted the development of key industries including modern finance, high technology, exhibition, trade, and culture and sports.

"We are focused on the combination of Macao's own development with the construction of the Bay Area and the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, in a bid to provide new development platforms for industries, and share new development dividends with overseas Chinese and friends from all walks of life," he added.

In addition to the main forum, the event also organized a promotion for the Bay Area and four parallel sessions centering on the establishment of overseas Chinese organizations, the development of overseas Chinese youth, Chinese-language education and Chinese-language media.

Wu Xiaohui, mayor of Jiangmen, said the city is the hometown of many overseas Chinese, with more than 5.3 million of them living in 145 countries and regions claiming origins in the city.

As a window for overseas Chinese to observe Guangdong, Jiangmen sees the conference as an opportunity to display the new look of the city and the Bay Area.

Jiangmen, located in the southwestern Pearl River Delta region, is an important hub city in the core zone of the Bay Area.

The city also serves as a new growth pole in the Bay Area's high-quality development. In 2022, its GDP hit 377.34 billion yuan ($54.19 billion), up 3.3 percent year-on-year. The growth rate ranked second in the province.

Jiangmen has cultivated three industrial clusters of modern agriculture and food, modern light textiles and advanced materials, each with annual output exceeding 100 billion yuan.

It also focuses on the construction of new energy and new-generation electronic information industrial clusters.

This year, the city will strive to generate more than 400 billion yuan in GDP and attract over 200 billion yuan of investment in new industrial projects.

Jiangmen now boasts 24 national industrial bases and attaches great importance in the four strategic emerging industries of high-end equipment manufacturing, intelligent robotics, environmental protection, and laser and additive manufacturing.

With more than 100 square kilometers of contiguous land, Jiangmen has much space for industrial development.

An outline of the development plan for the Bay Area proposes to support the city to build the Daguang Bay Economic Zone, together with Hong Kong and Macao, to deepen cooperation with the two SARs in areas of finance, tourism, cultural and creative industries, e-business, the marine economy, vocational education and health.

The outline also supports Jiangmen in building a key platform for cultural exchanges and cooperation among overseas Chinese.

Taking the conference as an opportunity, the city will strengthen the promotion and protection of culture related to overseas Chinese. Every year, it organizes an array of cultural events and has established the Jiangmen Wuyi Overseas Chinese Museum. Wuyi is a general term referring to Jiangmen's five regions of Xinhui, Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Heshan.

The city is also home to a UNESCO-listed heritage site known as Kaiping Diaolou and Villages. It was listed in the world cultural catalog in 2007. An incredible fusion of Chinese and Western architecture, it has been described as "a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms" by UNESCO experts.

To better attract investment, Jiangmen has made sustained efforts to improve its business climate and created a friendly environment for entrepreneurship.

It has also introduced many favorable services and policies that make people from the two SARs have a sense of belonging to the city.

For instance, the Jiangmen-Hong Kong cross-border administrative service platform was put into operation in Hong Kong in September 2021.

The platform enables Hong Kong companies and individuals to deal with 400-plus administrative items of Jiangmen locally, offering great convenience. Before that, the city opened a similar service center in Macao.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn