Being surpassed by Yunnan and facing the pursuit of Guizhou, where is the path for Guangxi's rise?

Guangxi’s 14th Five-Year Plan will vigorously implement the strategy of strengthening the capital city, further promote the integration of Beibu Qin and defense, build the Nanning metropolitan area to high standards, fully build the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration, and build and build a strong Beibu Gulf economic zone. , to take the lead in leading high-quality development and high-level opening up in the region.

From this, it can be seen that the strategic direction of Guangxi in the future has basically been set: the first is to strengthen the capital and build the Nanning metropolitan area; the second is to vigorously develop the Beibu Gulf region.

The president believes that Guangxi’s strategic direction during the 14th Five-Year Plan period is not wrong, nor is the strategy of strengthening the capital. The key is how to implement it consistently.

Since the Beihai Development in 1988, Guangxi’s strategy has been vacillating and changing, so much so that it has completely missed various development opportunities.

Internal strategic level. After the Beihai real estate bubble burst in 1993, Guangxi immediately shifted its strategic focus from the Beibu Gulf to Fangchenggang. In the 2010s, the development of Fangcheng Port had just begun to pick up, and Guangxi chose to support Qinzhou Port, thus laying the hidden danger for the three cities of Beiqin and Fang to fall into homogeneous competition.

External strategic level. When the Nannan-Kunming Railway was completed and opened to traffic in 1997, Guangxi proposed the idea of ??a large southwest sea passage. However, due to the inactivity of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan at that time, it was ultimately shelved.

After 2003, China-ASEAN entered the honeymoon period. Nanning won the sole right to host the China-ASEAN Expo, and Guangxi proposed to be a bridgehead for China to connect with ASEAN.

However, Guangxi was born at the wrong time. At that time, my country's largest trading partners were the United States, Europe, Japan, and South Korea, while ASEAN did not account for the majority. In addition, the economies of the ten ASEAN countries were still very weak at that time, so it could not The trade profits brought by Guangxi are almost negligible.

Due to setbacks, Guangxi once again put its strategic focus on the Beibu Gulf. In 2006, Guangxi issued the "Beibu Gulf Economic Zone Development Plan". Due to the failure to build highways, ports and other infrastructure in time, the Beibu Gulf Development has also been tepid. The president has previously analyzed it, please click here to view it. Guangxi Beibu Gulf Economic Zone has unique location conditions, but why can’t it go global?

In 2019, Guangxi issued the "Implementation Plan for Comprehensive Connecting of Guangxi with the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area" and began to pay attention to the development of southeastern Guangxi and increase transportation construction to Guangdong. Immediately afterwards, Guangxi proposed the strategy of strengthening the capital city and supported Nanning in becoming bigger and stronger.

It can be seen that in the past 30 years, Guangxi has wanted, wanted, and wanted without a strategic focus. It has picked up sesame seeds and lost watermelons, and staged the story of "little monkey going down the mountain". In the end Empty hands.

The period from 2000 to 2010 was the climax period of the Pearl River Delta's "empty the cage and replace the bird". Guangxi failed to seize the opportunity to connect with the Pearl River Delta and missed the golden opportunity period to undertake the transfer of manufacturing industry.

So, today, is it still feasible for Guangxi to pin its hopes of rising on Guangdong? First of all, the problem of unbalanced regional development in Guangdong today is very serious. In 2018, there were still 14 prefectures and cities in the province whose per capita GDP did not reach the national average.

The per capita GDP of Zhanjiang, Maoming, and Yangjiang cities in western Guangdong is even lower than that of Fangchengang and Beihai. In other words, today’s economic development level in the western Guangdong region is not much better than that in the southeastern Guangxi region.

In 2013, Guangdong officially issued a development plan to revitalize the east, west, and north of Guangdong, and began to make great efforts to solve the problem of uneven regional development. In 2018, Guangdong proposed the development pattern of "one core, one belt and one district" and established two provincial sub-central cities, Shantou and Zhanjiang, in eastern Guangdong and western Guangdong respectively. Later, it broke the transfer of industrial echelons and transferred some industries to eastern and western Guangdong. industry.

As Guangdong increases its "feedback" efforts to the east, west, and north regions of Guangdong, how many industries can be transferred to Guangxi in the future?

Of course, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is one of the engines of China’s economic growth, and Guangxi must embrace this, but in the final analysis, Guangxi’s development must rely on itself.

Why is there nothing wrong with the strong capital strategy? In 2020, China has entered the era of strengthening provincial capitals. We see that not only central and western provinces such as Hubei, Jiangxi, and Sichuan are strengthening provincial capitals, but even coastal Fujian, Shandong, and Jiangsu are following suit.

In 2019, Nanning’s primacy was only 21.22, ranking in the middle and lower reaches of the country in terms of primacy and economic scale. Therefore, implementing the strategy of strengthening the capital city is not only in line with the trend of the times, but also a measure suitable for Guangxi’s regional conditions.

In addition, compared with other central and western provinces, Guangxi has its own unique regional situation, sitting on the only outlet to the sea in the west, which is another trump card for Guangxi to break through in the future.

In the context of the "Belt and Road" construction, 12 provinces and cities in the west are making every effort to promote the "construction of a new land-sea corridor in the west." Guangxi's long-standing dream of a "Southwest Sea Channel" is becoming a reality.

From January to October this year, the cargo throughput growth rate of Beibu Gulf Port ranked first among all ports in the country, and it began to enter a period of rapid development.

On the other hand, China's foreign trade pattern has also changed today. In 2019, ASEAN has historically replaced the United States, Japan and Europe as China's largest trading partner. With the launch of RCEP, the world's largest free trade zone, economic and trade cooperation between Guangxi and ASEAN is promising.

If we give up the two trump cards of Nanning and Beibu Gulf at this time, it will be equivalent to abandoning our martial arts and giving up development opportunities in the next thirty years.

First of all, ideologically transform to ocean thinking; strategically, we must establish the development strategy of "growing towards the sea". Secondly, the problem of Beiqin’s defense taking the lead needs to be solved as soon as possible. The president has previously said that it is imperative to support Qinzhou to become the leading city in the Beibu Gulf. Whether Guangxi can rise depends on these two trump cards

However, some netizens believe that Fangcheng Port is the best deep-water port in the Beibu Gulf, and supporting Qinzhou is a wrong choice. Is it really so? In the era of infrastructure madness, ports have long been successful not by geographical conditions, but by their hinterland. Whoever has a broad hinterland has more potential for development.

Let’s look at the world’s largest port—Shanghai Yangshan Port, which is a deep-water port dug manually. Another example is Tianjin Port, which is located at the estuary of the Haihe River. A large amount of sediment flows into the sea every year. Is the port condition good?

But Tianjin Port is the largest port in the north. Why? Because it is also dug out manually.

Qinzhou is the geographical geometric center of the Beibu Gulf. The port conditions are not bad. In addition, the population and economic foundation are the best among the three cities in Beiqin and Fang. As long as the port infrastructure construction is increased, it is completely possible. The conditions can make Qinzhou Port a first-class deep-water port.

At the same time, we have also seen that there are no major rivers flowing through the outlet of Beibu Gulf. This is a "natural flaw" of Beibu Gulf, but this does not mean that the value of Beibu Gulf will be greatly reduced.

On the one hand, Guangxi has started building the Pinglu Canal to artificially solve the problem of Nanning's outlet to the sea. On the other hand, with the changes in transportation methods, the role of railways in freight transportation has become increasingly prominent. The top priority is to increase the construction of highways and railway networks in the Beibu Gulf region, reduce cargo transportation costs, and create a new economic growth pole in Guangxi.

In 2019, Yunnan’s GDP officially caught up with Guangxi’s, and Guizhou is about to bite Guangxi’s “butt”. Whether Guangxi can defend the "dignity" of coastal provinces depends on this last-ditch battle.