How does Guangxi and its booming city of Liuzhou compare with other Chinese cities and regions in terms of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and the ability of residents to afford products and services?
For foreign businesses looking to invest in China and trying to find the most suitable region and city for that investment, market opportunity and costs of running a business are obviously going to be the most important factors in any enterprise, and those differ widely from city to city in China.
Guangxi Province in China's Southwest region is still in the midst of great strides of development. Guangxi's role model will most certainly be its immediate neighbor to the east, Guangdong, with its incredible opportunities for foreign enterprises.
The statistics in this entry have all been taken from the World Bank's new report on 120 of China's cities, which can be found at the World Bank's China-specific site.
Guangxi Province's per capita GDP is CNY 6,790 (US$865), which is very close to the average provincial per capita GDP of the Southwest provinces, which range from CNY 4,082 to 9,382. Unfortunately, the Southwest region's average per capita GDP is the worst in the nation. And since Guangxi will always be compared with neighboring Guangdong, they have to struggle to rise to the much stronger position of Guangdong Province's figure of CNY 19,325 (US$2,460).
And for specific economic information from Liuzhou, we can look to the annual average wage. The World Bank report places the city's annual average wage at CNY 16,504 (US$2,100). Of the fifteen Southwest cities in the report, with annual average wages spanning from CNY 11,384 to 17,613, Liuzhou lands well above the average of CNY 14,864 for the region.
Guangxi Province's foreign invested enterprises (FIE) account for 15% of industrial assets, which is no where near China's Southeast, but still an impressive show of foreign investment. Liuzhou is well-known as Guangxi Province's leading industrial city, and it certainly wants to capitalize even more on its manufacturing capabilities to draw in even more foreign investment.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) can be an incredible boost for growth in the still developing Southwest, and provinces like Guangxi and its leading manufacturing centers like Liuzhou, are ripe for the picking. And quite obviously, the report has found that the correlation between the GDP and FDI is quite high, because residents of richer regions can afford foreign products and services, and richer local governments can afford more investment in infrastructure, environmental quality, and education which attract foreign investors.
