November 26th, the construction of the south China intelligent manufacturing project of Goertek Inc. begins in Songshan Lake Park of Dongguan. As one of Dongguan’s major construction projects, this project involves a total investment of about RMB 3 billion and will be put into use in 2021. It will serve as south China base of Goertek Inc., and will build a series of facilities for industry-leading experimental testing, autonomous manufacturing, smart warehousing, living and other supporting facilities. The base is set to provide leading clients with comprehensive solutions to R & D and manufacturing of products such as virtual reality, smart wear, smart headset, and smart speaker.
Feng Li, Vice President of Goertek Inc. reckoned that Dongguan has a solid manufacturing foundation and a comprehensive industrial system. Songshan Lake, as a core composition of Dongguan, has established a sound ecosystem of innovation, formed a sizable cluster of innovation industry, and nurtured a law-based international business environment. Goertek Inc. has a firm belief in the development prospects of Songshan Lake and has decided to grow its strengths in talent, supply chain and technology here.
Since the beginning of this year,Songshan Lake, as a powerful engine driving Dongguan’s high-quality development, still forged ahead amid complicated domestic and overseas economic situation and maintained its investment vitality. Under the concerted efforts of different departments of the Administrative Committee of Songshan Lake through coordination, reform and innovation, Songshan Lake develops firmly, particularly in investment in fixed assets, and has emerged as a magnet for investment in the Greater Bay Area.
In the first three quarters of this year, investment in fixed assetsgrew by 26.5% year-on-year despite various adversities, which was 10.5 percentage points higher than the annual target. Industrial investment also managed to maintain relatively high growth at 16.2% year-on-year, contributing 8 percentage points at the growth of Songshan Lake’s investment in fixed assets.
It is learned that Songshan Lake’sgood performance in fixed asset investment is attributable to investment in technological transformation in the industry. The first nine months of this year, investment in technological transformation has grown by 88.6% year-on-year, accounting for 17.5% of Dongguan’s total investment in technological transformation. Among them, information technology, new energy, intelligent equipment manufacturing and biotechnology show greatest willingness in reconstruction and technological transformation, and make relatively greater contribution to investment in technological transformation.
According toa staff member from the Administrative Committee of Songshan Lake, since the beginning of this year, Songshan Lake has given play to reform dividends such as coordination of functional area of Songshan Lake. Different departments closely collaborate with each other to facilitate projects and launch policies on multiple fronts in order to boost high-quality economic development. They strive to provide the best possible services for investment such as strengthening supervision of project fulfillment, following construction of land project, and convening project supervision meeting and special coordination meeting on a regular basis. These endeavors aim to accelerate the beginning of construction and the completion of the projects, and to achieve earlier generation of benefits and better economic resilience.
Thoughtful one-stop services
Providing 24/7 mobile service counters
Trucks were shuttling back and forth and workers were busy at workin the site of phase 1 of the project of new energy lithium-ion battery packaging (hereinafter referred to as “new energy project”).
This land with nearly 200,000 square meters will accommodate new energy-equipped facilities such as surface-mount factory, packaging factory, warehouse, activity center and cafeteria. And ten or twenty thousand people will work and live here. The lithium-ion battery manufactured here will be widely applied to consumer electronic products and power devices for vehicles with annual production capacity reaching 450 million pieces. This will mark a major breakthrough among Dongguan’s foreign-invested projects and an important effort of Songshan Lake and Dongguan in cultivating emerging industries such as new energy and new materials.
“TheAdministrative Committee of Songshan Lake has been providing consistent services since September 2018 by adopting an innovative and flexible working style and an attitude that shares the concerns of the enterprises to coordinate different departments, so as to assist in completing all the required procedures for starting the construction of the project by the end of January 2019. Such speed of project review and approval sets a new record compared to our investment in other cities.”
According to Yu Lunhao, the new energy engineer in charge ofthe management of construction procedures and on-site construction, the Administrative Committee of Songshan Lake has spared no efforts to provide high-quality services for the project construction. Different departments have collaborated with each other efficiently and taken the initiative in reform and innovation. The enterprise investment service center also coordinated multiple parties and implemented project manager service system, which is like a 24-hour available mobile service counter that addresses various challenges encountered by the enterprise during project construction and helps the enterprise to contact the department as required to get problems solved.
The project manager service system mentioned by Yu Lunhaois a part of Songshan Lake’s project service mechanism. A designated project manager will be assigned for each major project to patrol the construction site regularly, follow the construction process, and figure out the existing problems during construction and get them solved.
The project of Inovance Technology R&D Operation center started in September this year is the south China R&D center of Inovance, mainly dealing with the R&D, design, integratedproduction system, sales and technology services for industrial robots and their key components, new energy vehicles and their key components, as well as software for automatic equipment and machinery and electronic products. Recently, with the coordination of the Bureau of Natural Resources, Urban Construction, Urban Management, Enterprise Investment and other departments in Songshan Lake and through consultation with the neighboring enterprises, Inovance project assisted its neighbors in filling back soil, which helped enterprises save costs of RMB 2 million and accelerated project construction.
The above two projects show Songshan Lake’s effortson facilitating fixed asset investment under high efficiency. From January to September, industrial investment in Songshan Lake reached RMB 7.21 billion, growing by16.2% year-on-year, accomplishing 74.6% of the annual plan, and accounting for 15.2% of Dongguan’s total industrial investment. During the same period, investment in technological transformation in Dongguan reached RMB 5.707 billion, continually growing by88.6% year-on-year, and representing 17.5% of the city’s total investment in technological transformation.
In terms of the involved industries in newly constructed projects, projects under construction and completed projects, they widely cover major industries in Songshan Lakeincluding projects of information technology industry such as Plot Eight for Huawei’s Tuanbowa industrial project, phase 3 of investment and production expansion project of Huabei Electronic, intelligent equipment manufacturing center of Zhengye Technology, and phase 2 window protection glass project of Lens Technology; intelligent manufacturing projects such as Inovance technology R&D and operation center and industrialization of new energy equipment of Dongfeng; new energy projects such as lithium-ion battery packaging; biotechnology projects such as Rongda Bioengineering R&D and manufacturing and Dongyang Bio, as well as projects of modern service industry such as Guangda We Valley.
Multi-level alignment
Combined review and approval at “Songshan Lake speed”
Considering thecommon expectations and actual development needs of early construction, production and generation of benefits of the investment projects, Songshan Lake is establishing a multi-level alignment service system featuring “enterprise-project manager team-enterprise investment service center-departments of the Administrative Committee-departments of the municipal government”. Difficulties arising during investment will be collected from various sources and solutions will be worked out by relevant departments to ensure timely settlement.
In last November, the R&D and manufacturing project of Rongda Bioengineering was assigned a piece of land. Upon planning and design in December, thestaff member who was responsible for the project found that the pipe-end and pipe lying under the land needed to be relocated, so they turned to Project Manager Li Huajie for help.
“We host a service guarantee meeting for major projects every month, which is one of our service mechanisms for major projects. We also posted the problem encountered by Rongda Bioengineering at the meeting and looked for solution,” saidLi Huajie. Though the subsequent relocation lagged behind somewhat due to factors such as weather, no water and arrangement of construction team, the project still managed to start construction in May, three months ahead of the original plan.
Faced withcomplex examination and approval procedures, multiple parties involved and long time required, construction projects have always been a pain and different point in reform of administrative approval. To optimize business environment and lower overall operation costs of enterprises, Dongguan has become a reform pilot of examination and approval system of construction projects in Guangdong province in 2018. Subsequently, Songshan Lake started out as Dongguan’s first city-level pilot of deepening reform of examination and approval system of construction projects.
Since the launch of the pilot project, Songshan Lake handled examination and approval services by implementing mechanisms such as joint examination and approval and acceptance notwithstanding temporary lack of some documents, providingpart of one-stop online services and utilizing measures of “joint examination and approval, time-limited settlement and fast examination and approval”. Efforts have been made to improve examination and approval process in the early stage of construction projects. With time required for examination and approval being shortened, project construction can be accelerated.
By September 19th, the pilot zone has totally served 1,032 enterprises in the procedure of examination and approval and 6,146 service items were handled. The average time required for accepting the documents has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Since the reform began, the service items involved in a construction project have been simplified from the number of 163 to 60, decreasing by 63%; the time required from project confirmation to obtaining construction licensing has been shortened to 26 working days, decreasing by 71%. This offers new experience in reform of examination and approval system of construction projects for Dongguan and Guangdong.
Unleashing reform dividends
Functional area of Songshan Lake witnessing increasingly enhanced economic resilience
In May this year, the official start of reform of administration of towns undermunicipal government with stronger coordination of functional areas as the core in functional area of Songshan Lake. 168 items of municipal-level power controlled by the city delegated to Songshan Lake functional area, which drawn wide attention.
On August 1st, the conference on delegating municipal-level power in “economic development” to Songshan Lake functional area was held. During the conference, people in charge from Songshan Lake Industrial Development Bureau clearly listed the 21 items of power delegated to Songshan Lake functional area from departments such as Development & Reform Bureau, Bureau of Industry and Information Technology, Bureau of Commerce, Bureau of Investment Promotion, and Office of Major Projects Construction. Songshan Lake functional area will lead economic development under coordination upon the completion of its institutional reform.
Since the launch of reform pilot of the functional area, Songshan Lake has fully taken advantage of the reform dividends generated from coordinated development in the area, and constantly speeds up construction of major projects.
In the past, examination and approval of major project construction took at least three to four months. With delegation of 168 items ofmunicipal-level power to Songshan Lake functional area and establishment of relevant branches of municipal administration, certain examination and approval procedures have been considerably simplified. As a result, important institutional dividends have driven high-quality economic development such as fixed asset investment and strengthened resilience in economic development.
According to statistics, GDP of Sonshan Lake functional area grew by 7.6% year-on-year in the first three quarters, which was higher than the average level of Dongguan, Guangdong province and the whole country. The growth speed is relatively fast and economic development maintains a momentum with stability and progress. Investment in fixed assets reached RMB 49.984 billion in the first three quarters, increasing by 22.0% year-on-year, which was 3.9 percentage points higher than the average level of Dongguan; in terms of industrial investment, the investment reached RMB 17.744 billion in the functional area, increasing by 19.4% year-on-year, which was 1.8 percentage points higher than the growth from January to August; investment in technological transformation has grown by 57.3% year-on-year, which was 4 percentage points higher than the growth of previous eight months, maintaining a high-speed growth momentum.
Songshan Lake willutilize on the historic opportunities presented by Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Macao Science and Technology Innovation Corridor and coordination of functional area to play its role in driving the development of neighboring areas and bring into full play its existing advantages in industrial foundation. It will align with and accumulate high-end innovation resources in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and around the world to build itself into a demonstration area of independent innovation with international influence, pursue the goal of “A Pearl, A Thriving City, in the Greater Bay Area” and trigger a new round of reform and development.