The Guangdong Enterprise Competitiveness Promotion Association (GECPA) held a summit in Dongguan on 10th January. After 3 months of preparations for discussion and evaluation, GECPA announced Guangdong's Top 500 Competitive Enterprises for 2018. It is the third consecutive year since the list was first released in 2016.

Zhang Hongyu (General Secretary of GECPA), explained that GECPA had a mature system with which was used to evaluate nearly 2,900 enterprises according to basic requirements. According to Zhang, the system contains nearly a dozen standards regarding the scale, income, profit, innovation and influence of each enterprise. The new generation of information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing and new materials were the top 3 industries in the list.

This year, 23 Dongguan enterprises are listed in the Top 500, following Shenzhen (226), Guangzhou (122) and Foshan (39), ranking Dongguan fourth in the province. Approximately a third (8 of the 23 enterprises) are involved in the Internet, telecommunication and other electronics equipment manufacturing industry.

Total assets, net profit and investment in research and development of the 23 enterprises are 494,876 million RMB, 18,624 million RMB and 3,486 million RMB respectively, and own 6,431 patents. The listed Dongguan enterprises are entering a new stage of growth, with profitability and investment in R&D figures on the rise. This indicates that the capacity of technological innovation is the key to advance their core competitiveness.

 
(By Ashley Zheng and Sev Pischl)