By Zhuanghuan, SFC, 21st Century Business Herald

On February 24, the first workday after the Spring Festival holiday, Guangdong convened its first major meeting of the new year—the 2026 Guangdong Provincial High-Quality Development Conference. The premier event brought together government officials, industry experts and business leaders to chart the course for the province's high-quality development going forward.

As a major province for the private sector, private entities constitute over 96% of all business entities in Guangdong. They contribute more than half of the provincial GDP, over 60% of tax revenue, over 70% of technological innovations and 80% of employment. In essence, the private sector serves not only as a cornerstone of Guangdong's economy but also a driving force behind its high-quality development.

Guangdong is China's largest economic powerhouse, with a longstanding and high degree of openness and integration into global markets. In 2025, Guangdong's foreign trade hit a record high, with total import and export value reaching 9.49 trillion yuan, accounting for 20.9% of the national total. Among the 172,000 enterprises with import and export performance, a striking 148,000 are private firms. This means they have already become the mainstay of Guangdong's foreign trade.

Amid accelerating global industrial transformation and intensifying international competition, the traditional model of global expansion requires an urgent upgrade. As the new year unfolds, how will Guangdong's private enterprises innovate their global strategies? How will they leverage intelligent manufacturing as the engine and industrial internet as the link to climb higher up the global value chain and build a more stable and resilient global layout? The conference unveiled Guangdong's answer to the world.

Chief Producer: Zhao Haijian

Supervising Producer: Huang Yanshu

Reporter: Zhuang Huan, Huang Zihao

Poster: Zheng Jiaqi

Overseas Operations Supervising Producer: Huang Yanshu

Overseas Content Coordinator: Huang Zihao

Overseas Operations Editors: Zhuang Huan, Wu Wanjie, Long Lihua, Zheng Quanyi

Produced by: Southern Finance Media Corp.