COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMY

1. INTRODUCTION OF ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT
Shantou has a long history of foreign trade and the most outstanding characteristics of its economy are export-oriented. In 1861, Shantou was made one of the open seaport cities and it has long been called “Century Commercial City”. In 1921, Shantou City was set up and it became one of important seaport cities in south China. The commercial development was once ranked the seventh and the annual handling capacity of Shantou Port ranked the third in our country. Eight foreign countries of the USA, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Holland and Belgium set their consulates here. Shantou has long been regarded as an international commercial city enjoying high popularity in the world. In 1981, Shantou became one of the special economic zones in China and stepped into a new period of development. In 1987, the GDP per person was twice of that in 1980 and in 1995 it was three times of that. In 1992, Shantou was chosen as one of the “50 strong cities with powerful comprehensive strength” and one of the “40 cities with best-fertilized environment for investment”. In 1994, Shantou became one of the 55 cities with GDP per person amounting over 10,000 BMB. In 1996, the State Statistics Bureau made investigation of the comprehensive strength of 219 prefectural cities, and Shantou ranked the forty-first. In 2000, the GDP of the whole city is 47.79 billion RMB, which increased by 17.5 times compared with that of 1980 before the founding of Shantou SEZ. Shantou has fundamentally formed a all-around, multi-level, wide-field opening economic structure with the special economic zone as its center, the Free Trade Zone, the New High-tech Industrial Development Zone and Nan’ao Island Development Experimental Zone as its front, and Chaoyang and Chenghai City as its two wings.
Shantou SEZ, with new image, is facing new opportunities and challenges after China enters WTO in the coming 21st century. Shantou is further optimizing investment environment, normalizing economic order and speeding up the step to realize international practice. Great efforts are being made to develop Shantou into an important base for high-tech industry, and an export base closely cooperated with Hong Kong and Macao and firmly related in economy with the world. We are trying to build Shantou as a pioneer zone of socialist marketing economy and a model zone of sustainable development, becoming a regional center with strong comprehensive service functions and one of the cities in China most suitable for development and living. Shantou is marching towards the goal of a modern international seaport city.

2. INDUSTRY
Light industry is the main field in Shantou industry. The traditional export products include sensitive materials, ultrasonic machines, electronic products, ceramics, drawn-work pieces, textiles, garments, medicines and handicrafts. The overall industry output in 2000 was 81.58 billion RMB. Since 1990, industry output has increased averagely by 25.1% per year. The industry in Shantou SEZ has developed into an export-oriented, multifunctional and comprehensive development mode from the processing-zone mode in its early time, forming the backbone fields of ultrasonic and electronic products, textiles and garments, oil and chemicals, machinery, foodstuffs, medicines, printing and packing materials, toys and handicrafts. More than 20 famous brand products such as printing circuit plates, ultrasonic instruments and polystyrene appear to be competitive in the market.

3. RURAL ECONOMY
Shantou is the first prefectural “Ton-grain” and “Ton-cereal” city (i.e. average grain and cereal output is 1,000 kg per Chinese mu per year) of grain production for ten years in a succession. The farmers in Chao-Shan Districts are famous for their intensive farming and their work has been praised as doing embroidery. Agriculture production with high output, high quality and high-return is developing well and the industrialization of agriculture shows good tendency, forming six main fields of grain-production, vegetable-farming, poultry and livestock raising, aquatic breeding and fruit and tea growing and flower-planting. A large batch of high quality and rare products are well known at home and abroad. Relying on the progress of science and technology, agriculture of industrialization, modernization and with market principles is developing prosperously. Marketing business in Shantou urban and rural areas is flourishing and there are 204 agriculture by-products markets and specialized markets, with annual business amounts up to 3.2 billion RMB. The general output of the whole city in 2000 is 8.843 billion RMB and the pure annual income per person in rural areas is 4,343 RMB.

4. INTRODUCTION OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT
The superiority of a special economic zone, an overseas Chinese hometown and the improved investment environment has made Shantou one of the hot points for foreign investment. The overseas Chao-Shan people have played an important role in investment and the economic construction of their hometown. Mr. Li Ka shing, a famous businessman from Hong Kong, has made investment on nine projects amounting 8.8 hundred million USDs.
Shantou has made efforts in introducing consortiums, commercial firms and large investment from originally the medium and small fund investment. Forty-seven transnational companies have made investment on industry projects in Shantou, among which are 12 of the 500 top enterprises in the world including Shell, Kodak, Caltex from the USA, Henkel from Germany. Businessmen from thirty-one countries or regions have made investments in Shantou. Since 1979, Shantou has introduced more than 5,000 foreign investment enterprises, actually utilizing foreign fund of 6.4 7.28 billion USDs.

5. PRIVATE ECONOMY
Developing early and fast with multielement and mixed ownership, the non-public-owned economy has become an important force to push the economic developent in Shantou. In 2000, the industry output of the non-public-owned economy shared over 70% of that of the whole city, and the export amounts took more than 40% of the total. There are 74,580 individual and private enterprises with 523,600 workers and staffs. In 2000, the output of private technical enterprises was 10.5 billion RMB. There are 62 state or province-level high-tech enterprises in Shantou, among which 43 belong to non-public-owned enterprises. And among the 7 state-level high-tech enterprises, there are 4 non-public-owned enterprises.
Towns and township enterprises in Shantou rural areas are developing rapidly. There are 16 towns with annual output over 1 billion RMB, 90 villages (residential areas) with annual output over 100 million RMB and 36 township enterprises with annual industrial output over 100 million RMB. 20 township enterprises have gained certification of ISO9000 International Quality System. Famous brands like “ARCHE” and “AIKAI” cosmetics, “AULDEY” toys, “Yi hua” wood floor boards are well known as “gold brand” in Guangdong even in China.

6. FINANCE
To meet the needs of the development of the Special Economic Zone, Shantou finance has been developed into a system with the local central bank as its supervisor and the state-owned commercial banks as its main body, permitting policy banks, stock commercial banks, foreign-fund banks, insurance companies, share and security companies, rural credit cooperatives and hock firms to exist and cooperate with appropriate division. At the end of 2000, there were 968 banking finance organs (networks), including 4 state-owned commercial branch banks, 1 policy branch bank, 5 joint-stock commercial banks (branches), 4 insurance branch companies and 4 foreign fund branch banks.

7. INFORMATION INDUSTRY
With largest investment and longest distance passing though largest of countries, the largest capacity international optical fiber cables like the Europe-Asia, China-America Submarine Cables and Asia-Pacific No.2 Cable land Shantou and this makes Shantou one of the important joint points of international Infohighway on China mainland.
Shantou is making great efforts to push informationalization and digitalization procession in the city, nearly finishing the large-capacity, high-efficiency and wide-band multimedia data transmission network. The speedy construction and application of the computer information network have formed the public computer network system with the five networks of government, education, telecommunications, technology and Guangdong Telecommunication nets as representatives. Networks and data are more and more used in people’s daily life and work. . There are nearly 91.3 thousand internet users in the city. Shantou has made information industry one of the four pillar industries (information, biologic engineering, new materials and electromechanical integrated technology).

8. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
At the beginning of 1990s, new and high-tech industry began to develop rapidly, and it became one of the most active economic increasing points. The contribution rate made by science and technology to the economy growth has been raised from 21.1% in 1991 to 44% in 2000. Shantou has gained the title of “the national advanced city of developing city by science and technology” for two years in a succession and has been chosen as “the national experiment region for technology innovation projects”. By the end of 2000, 4.493 patent items have been approved, 616 scientific and technical progenies have passed the examination and approved by the specialists. 518 items have gained prizes for progress on science and technology from governments of perpetual cities or above level. There are 62 province-level high-tech enterprises with annual output of 9.2 billion RMB. In May 1999, Shantou took the lead in China to set up a science and technology development base for postdoctors from Beijing and Guangdong and the first enterprise working station for postdoctors in east Guangdong, establishing the trinity system of government, science and technology research institutes and enterprises. And they made science and technology exchanges and cooperation with countries and regions like the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Brazil, Spain, Hong Kong and Macao one after another.