Dongguan began with garments, footwear, toys and Christmas trees, then moved into consumer electronics.
Now it also assembles communications equipment, telecom switches, routers and automobiles. It is also engaged in new, painstaking efforts to build a different image by fostering hi-tech industry and innovation.
That transformation can be seen in Songshan Lake Sci-Tech Industry Park, an hour’s drive from the airports in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, South China’s booming economic powerhouses.
Apart from being so conveniently close to the ‘world’s factory’, the park embodies Dongguan’s new direction. Which is to move up the manufacturing chain.
He Yuepei, director of Dongguan Sci-Tech Bureau said, ‘We have laid a solid foundation to do so.’
He said 400 nation-level hi-tech companies and 1,500 private hi-tech companies of various scales have been set up in the city. In 1978, the city had only one registered engineer; now it has more than 1.2 million.
During the past five years the government has invested more than RMB10 billion to improve the infrastructure of the fledging hi-tech park, which will eventually expand to the size of Hong Kong Island.
Source: Business