Opinion | Hu Chunhua eager to maintain Guangdong's engine of growth
Provincial party chief Hu Chunhua determined to keep its place among top three economic regions amid stiff competition from elsewhere
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou remain the top three cities on the mainland in terms of economic status and living standards.
But Guangdong's new Communist Party chief, Hu Chunhua, is worried that the southern city may be losing its glamour and becoming increasingly irrelevant.
At the recent meeting of the provincial People's Congress, Hu told Guangzhou officials to stay alert and be prepared because the city's economic status was under threat. Not only was the gap with Beijing and Shanghai widening, he said, but Guangzhou was also facing stiff competition from the port city of Tianjin in the north.
"Last year, Tianjin's total economic output was only 60 billion yuan (HK$74 billion) less than Guangzhou's, and if looking at other indicators, Guangzhou is already falling behind," , the provincial party mouthpiece, quoted Hu as saying last week.
Unlike his predecessor Wang Yang , who told Guangdong officials that the quality of growth was more important than the quantity, Hu, a rising political star who has been in his new post for fewer than two months, has made the province's economic ranking a higher priority.
Echoing his concerns, senior Guangdong officials at the People's Congress meeting vowed to speed up growth amid worries the province might lose its economic pole position as the mainland's most productive region to Jiangsu as early as 2015.
