Recently, the Guangzhou Government held the Guangzhou and Hong Kong Economic and Trade Cooperation Conference and the announce meeting for the "2008 White Paper for Guangzhou foreign trade and economic" in Hong Kong. Guangzhou Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau signed the "Memorandum for Cooperation between Guangzhou and Hong Kong on Modern Service Industries" with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. This action sends a strong signal to the outside world: Guanghzou and Hong Kong will work together to build a modern service industriey system through the service cooperation of the two sides.
Fully perform their respective strengths
It has been revealed that in the new round of cooperation between Guangzhou and Hong Kong on modern service industries, they will combine their own strengths of industrial base and play their respective role. For Guangzhou, when they take over the service business, they will focus more on the introduction of services with advanced productivity.
Hong Kong Trade Development Council and the Guangzhou Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau have agreed to strengthen the cooperation in modern service industries. The two sides will set up the system of annual cooperation meeting and liaison system this year. The two sides should jointly promote the service brands overseas at least once a year and will emphasize the advantageous development of the service industry of both sides through their overseas offices.
Chen Mingde, vice mayor of Guangzhou said that it is an important direction for the internationalization of the city¡¯s economy that the whole industry chain and the value chain can extend to high-end given the impetus of the adoption of international standards and development of modern service industries.
Promote mutually beneficial and win-win pattern in service industries
In order to construct the system of modern service industry, Guangzhou Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau and Hong Kong Trade Development Council declared that the two governments will explore new thinking in cooperation and promote mutually beneficial and win-win results of modern service industries.
At present, Hong Kong has put half of its investment in the services sector, among them, projects in modern service industries such as leasing and business services, information transmission services, computer services and software, logistic services, financial services and other investment grow rapidly. Guangzhou has become an important offshore subcontracting destination for Hong Kong. Xiao Zhenyu, the Secretary of Guangzhou Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau told reporters that HSBC's global clearing center is settled in Tianhe of Guangzhou, and the East Asian Electronics, Hong Kong Telecom, PCCW and other enterprises also gradually transfer their data processing and call centers and other background businesses to Guangzhou. In 2007, Guangzhou absorbed 98.51 percent more capital from Hong Kong than the last year in services industries, which denotes that the cooperation between the two services sector is entering a high-speed developing period.
Chen Mingde pointed out that Guangzhou can become Hong Kong's decision-making centre, operation and marketing hub platform to enter the mainland under the framework of CEPA.
Joint development of four key areas
From this year, the two governments of Guangzhou and Hong Kong will focus on promoting comprehensive cooperation in four priority areas, namely finance, exhibition industry, logistics, services outsourcing.
Finance is the most important area of cooperation for Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Guangzhou will take the opportunity of RMB¡¯s fully opening to the outside world to promote cooperation in financial infrastructures, financial institutions and financial businesses.
In addition, Guangzhou will encourage enterprises in exhibition industry having their own brands and strong competitiveness in Guangzhou to cooperate with the famous Hong Kong Exhibition enterprises and brands exhibitions. This year, Guangzhou is planning to cooperate with Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Industry Association to carry out trainings on exhibition planning and extension, related economic and trade, legal knowledge and talents training.
In Logistics sector, Guangzhou will attract logistics distribution, international procurement, storage and processing enterprises to settle down in Guangzhou, relying on the favorable conditions of its New Baiyun Airport, Guangzhou Airport and Nansha Port, and also attract Asia-Pacific sourcing centre of the many multinational companies in Hong Kong to set up offices and procurement centers in Guangzhou.
In the services outsourcing area, Guangzhou and Hong Kong will promote the services outsourcing cooperation mainly from four areas and common build the "World's Office" oriented to the international market: develop services outsourcing Park, establish development mechanism for Guangzhou and Hong Kong software outsourcing industry, organize services outsourcing cooperation forum, co-operate with Hong Kong to undertake international high-end business process outsourcing businesses.
