“The difference between the Guizhou of today and when I was young is huge,” said 56-year-old Li Maoqin, a resident in the southwestern Chinese province’s capital, Guiyang. “It’s like the difference between the earth and the sky.”
Guiyang, nestled among luscious green mountain peaks, has typically been known more for poverty than innovation. As a child, Li was so poor she went with her grandmother from village to village, begging for food.
However, the rapidly developing city has a plan to reinvent itself as a technology hub, attracting thousands of tech-savvy entrepreneurs to a week-long expo, drawing big names to open data centers and embracing the self-proclaimed nickname “China’s big data valley.”
Photo: Reuters
While China’s growth has generally been powered by top-tier eastern cities, Guizhou last year posted the third-fastest economic growth among China’s 31 provinces and Guiyang was last year ranked as the best-performing city by the Milken Institute.
“If you have missed the investment opportunity in Guangdong or Zhejiang 30 years ago, by no means should you miss that of Guizhou today,” Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) chairman Jack Ma (馬雲) said.
An hour’s drive out of Guiyang is Gui An New District, a 1,795km2 suburb designated as the strategic heart of Guiyang’s technology aspirations.
A new Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) plant is among the first to open here, packed with hundreds of young employees brandishing smartphones and ID tags.
The center sits beside a newly built road lined with cars and bicycles in a newly built industrial park — Gui An’s public transport has yet to be built.
While Foxconn is among the first to arrive, more are coming. Tax incentives, state support and lower costs have helped draw companies, including Microsoft Corp, Huawei Technologies Co (華為), Hyundai Motor Co, Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Qualcomm Inc and Alibaba, to Guiyang.
A partnership with India’s NIIT for a Professional College of Electronics has been agreed, and a Chinese-UK data park of 30 companies are to jointly develop health technology.
The government has projected that investment into Gui An will increase by 11 percent to US$3.34 billion this year and create 30,000 jobs.
This marks a change from the established pattern of economic growth in China, which has been overwhelmingly based around the eastern growth corridor through Beijing, Shanghai, and the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou — Shanghai alone has been growing at an average annual rate of about 10 percent for the past 20 years.
However as populations have soared, so have costs, and the relative affordability of western China is increasingly appealing.
The third China Big Data Industry Expo in May was the latest opportunity to market Guiyang’s benefits.
This year, Alibaba announced it will launch a block data center with the Guiyang Public Security Bureau, while Tencent showcased augmented-reality hong bao and Hydata Software Co Ltd unveiled lip-reading recognition tech.
Although big data investment into Guizhou almost doubled last year, the landlocked province’s growth is also down to much-needed infrastructure. Guiyang has a modern railway station and international airport, with another 10,000km of highway and 4,000km of train tracks planned to be completed by 2020.
Programs to improve housing last year saw 458,000 people resettled into new homes, and the government said it lifted 1.2 million Guizhou residents out of poverty last year alone.
As a growing city, Guiyang is also showing some success in drawing in young talent.
Xiaoxiao Pan, a lecturer at Guizhou Normal University, said he originally moved back to Guiyang from Shanghai to be with his ill father, but decided he liked the lifestyle and stayed.
“Even compared with two years ago, there are many new companies going public, familiar brands, shopping malls, tall buildings,” he said.
Housing is cheap, at about 2,000 yuan (US$295) per month for a central apartment, while comparatively fresher air and the lush surrounding countryside also have appeal.
Taiwanese teacher Jerry Xie chose a job in Guiyang over Beijing because of pollution concerns and affordability.
“The salaries now are similar to Beijing, where the air sucks, and the cost of living here is much cheaper and they are eager for talented people,” he said.
However, there is much to be done in the rebranding of Guiyang. Gui An New District is an enormous building site marooned in surrounding countryside.
A survey put Guiyang in the top 10 worst Chinese cities for traffic. The skyline is dominated by cranes and roadworks, particularly around the Guizhou financial city district.
However, as the urban fabric of Guiyang changes under their feet, locals do not mind the roadworks and construction.
Finally, their city is going places.
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