Medium, small cities embark on development path with local characteristics

GUANGZHOU - Tales of fast growth in China are often heard about when speaking of metropolises like Shanghai and Shenzhen with strong economic foundations, regional advantages, and policy supports, among others.

However, the Chaoshan region, mainly including Chaozhou and Shantou cities in South China's Guangdong province, tells a different story of medium and small cities carving out a path in high-quality development, with emphasis on local characteristics.

Cultural relics

The government of Chaozhou city takes full advantage of local cultural relics to boost tourism as a pillar industry.

With a history of over 850 years, Guangji Bridge in Chaozhou is one of China's four famous ancient bridges, the other three being Lugou Bridge in Beijing, Zhaozhou Bridge in Hebei Province, and Luoyang Bridge in Fujian Province.

Guangji Bridge, out of the ordinary, has a part that is connected by boats as a pontoon. When the part is open, a channel is formed for ships to cross, a special case in the history of bridges in China.

The bridge was opened to the public in 2007 after a thorough restoration with various pavilions set up on it for showcasing cultural relics of local characteristics, mostly intangible cultural heritages, such as embroidery, wood carving, and ceramics.

Delicately sculpting a piece of wood, Chen Jia, a young wood carving artist, said that she started with an interest in studying this art and is now devoted to the "life-long work" of inheriting this intangible cultural heritage.

Likewise, Lin Chugang was meticulously showing his skills in Chaozhou embroidery. He combined fashion elements like cartoon and game characters with traditional embroidery art to cater to modern life and young generations.

Zhong Min, director of cultural relics conservation of Chaozhou, said that the Guangji Bridge has become a window for demonstrating the city, which provides a platform for various intangible cultural heritages and fuels local industrial development.

During the week-long Spring Festival holiday in January this year, over 2.85 million visits were made by tourists to Chaozhou, up 44.1 percent year-on-year. Of the total visits, 93,748 visits were made to Guangji Bridge, up 217.73 percent from a year ago, according to official data.

Charming tea

Dancong tea is a special type of Oolong from Fenghuang Mountain, Chaozhou. Dancong literally means "single bush" or "picked from one tree," known to mimic different fragrances of flowers and fruits naturally.

The local government has exerted efforts to cultivate Dancong into quality products now labeled as a high-end tea brand. Tea plantations in Fenghuang Town cover an area of nearly 80,000 mu (over 5,300 hectares), yielding about 8 million kg of Dancong tea a year and an output value of over 2.16 billion yuan ($302.99 million).

Chen Zhengsheng, a tea grower in Fenghuang, contracted with the local government to plant tea in a woodland of 400 mu in 1998, which now yields over 5,000 kg of tea and earns 1 million yuan every year.

The income was much lower before because of dated planting methods, he said, noting that annual professional training thereafter has helped tea growers learn scientific disease prevention and control, production, and management.

To further integrate tea plantations with local culture and tourism, the local government, jointly with enterprises, has organized tea-themed competitions, auctions, endorsements, and exhibitions, and built featured homestay hotels.

Based on the tea plantation, more will be done to strengthen the brand power of Dancong, and extend Dancong's influence to nurture other brands of tourism and local cuisine, said Cai Shufeng, Party chief of Fenghuang Town.

Digital management

Huaxu Tech company in Shantou City benefits a lot from digital management, which highly facilitates making an inventory. The company gives each item a unique ID and turns managing large amounts of goods into managing data.

Lin Zhihan, Huaxu's general manager, said that it takes only hours to finish checking hundreds of thousands of goods with digital management, which is needed days before, and the real-time data of quantity and location cuts down cost and time of trans-regional dispatch.

The reason businesses in Shantou are willing to seek digital management lies in the advanced communication infrastructure. Shantou is one of the three Chinese cities with a landing station for international submarine cable, an advantage for more efficient data transmission.

Financial enterprises require the time lag of data to be shortened to within one millisecond. So, faster data transmission is conducive to establishing a cross-border settlement platform, said Zhu Xiang, general manager of China Unicom's Shantou branch.

The Shantou city government has implemented policies to promote the digital economy. The city has built 8,244 5G base stations to cover the city proper, counties and towns. The industrial added value of the new generation electronic information technology increased by 15.1 percent year-on-year in 2022.