The Eighth Plenary Session of the 14th Dongguan Committee of the Communist Party of China was held on 8th January. According to data released during the session, Dongguan's economy throughout 2018 was stable with good momentum for growth. Dongguan's GDP hit 800-billion RMB, just shy of estimates forecasting 825 to 830 billion RMB. During 2018 the city helped reduce the burden on enterprises by 50 billion RMB resulting in the number of market entities surpassing 1.1 million.

Mr. Xiao Yafei (Mayor of Dongguan) confirmed details of the city's increased vibrancy during the past year. By promoting a special reform of the construction project approval system, the examination and approval time of more than 500 projects was reduced by at least 50%. By deepening the reform of the commercial system, the industrial and commercial registration can now be completed within one working day. Dongguan also implemented the "single window" for foreign-invested enterprises' business registration, and shortened the handling time to one working day, thus creating a better business environment.

The meeting also announced the investment-invitation achievements of Dongguan during last year. There were 172 newly introduced domestically-funded projects with a total investment of 205.2 billion RMB, and 102 projects which each had foreign investments exceeding US$10 million at an agreed total value of US$3.65 billion.

Dongguan attracted 29 major industrial projects with a total investment of over 400 billion RMB solely through the industry investment conference held last June. Dongguan also increased efforts to attract large-scale projects in the fields of high-end electronic information, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energies, and new materials. The number of intended investment projects was 129, with agreed intended investment exceeding 1.4 trillion RMB.

In 2018, Dongguan built 109 intelligent manufacturing demonstration lines, and funded 328 automatic transformation projects. The annual output of "3C" (computer, communication, consumer electronics) numerical control equipment exceeded 20,000 units.

Mr. Xiao said that with a solid foundation for economic development, Dongguan should now grasp major opportunities such as the construction of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Science and Technology Innovation Corridor, and seek to solve bottleneck problems as a priority. In 2019, Dongguan should focus on the construction of three platforms to dock the Bay Area strategy, together with several key projects such as the Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan Youth Innovation & Entrepreneurship City in the Bay Area. Efforts to actively foster new energy for development, and further strengthen investment attraction as well as industry cultivation should also be made.

(By Stefanie Tan and Sev Pischl)