The three provinces and one city in the Yangtze River Delta have successively released the 2024 provincial work report and the national economic and social development plan for the new year. What important work in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui has been put at the "head"? What are the characteristic practices in each region?
At the same time, the four provinces and cities announced the list of major projects in 2024. Does this list of projects indicate the region's future growth potential?
Through horizontal and vertical comparison, The Paper Institute found two commonalities and four characteristics in the New Year's planning of various parts of the Yangtze River Delta, in an attempt to outline the development picture of the Yangtze River Delta for the New Year.
Common point 1: play the role of "ballast stone" of high-tech manufacturing projects.
Looking at the 2024 work report, the draft national economic and social development plan and the list of major engineering projects of the three provinces and one city, the most distinctive feature is the increase in the number of large projects invested in the country, and the focus on high-tech manufacturing. According to the statistics of researchers from The Paper, except for Shanghai, the annual growth rate of investment in major projects in the Yangtze River Delta provinces in 2024 will reach double digits.
Data**: Related reports* Note: As of writing, Anhui has only released the first batch of data, and three batches have not yet been released; The annual growth rate of investment amount is based on the 2023 data as a reference value.
In the list of major projects in Shanghai 2024, the science and technology industry accounts for 40%, mainly concentrated in the fields of life and health, high-end equipment, integrated circuits, artificial intelligence and other fields (in order from high to low), which is in line with Shanghai's "3+6" science and technology innovation policy. Compared with the other three provinces, many of the projects in Shanghai belong to the aerospace and cruise industries.
The investment in Jiangsu Province is dominated by large projects. Of the 600 projects, more than 1 billion accounted for 70%. Of these, 695% belong to strategic emerging industries such as biomedicine, intelligent manufacturing equipment, and integrated circuits, 128% belong to future industries such as third-generation semiconductors, hydrogen energy, and new energy storage, and 177% of the projects belong to the transformation of traditional industries.
Zhejiang's "thousands of trillions" major projects have also been started. This plan calls for more than 1,000 major provincial construction projects to be promoted in 2024, and plans to complete an investment of more than 1 trillion yuan.
Anhui's 2024 data only discloses the first batch of major construction projects. However, the "Special Action Plan for Effective Investment in Anhui Province (2024)" proposes to implement a special action to invest in a strong province in science and technology and a strong manufacturing province, with a total physical workload of 680 billion yuan. In 2023, there will be 9,601 key projects in Anhui Province, with an annual planned investment of 16,597500 million yuan, which is expected to continue to break through this year.
Common point 2: Optimize government affairs and further improve the business environment.
The three provinces and one city all mentioned in the New Year's plan to "improve the business environment", and plan to focus on the optimization of government affairs, and optimize the government service environment through digital construction, simplification of government procedures and various "one-time" reforms.
But each has its own emphasis. As an international metropolis, Shanghai has formulated and implemented an action plan to optimize the business environment in line with the World Bank's new business environment assessment system7Version 0, focusing on openness, co-construction and optimization of supervision (for details, please refer to "The Paper City Observation|").Shanghai's business environment 70 version of the three key points: openness, co-construction, optimization of supervision).
Zhejiang's business environment improvement policy focuses on considering the economic structure dominated by the local private economy (see "Article 32 of the Private Economy"), with the goal of "allowing private enterprises to operate with peace of mind, invest with confidence, and concentrate on entrepreneurship", and put forward a series of measures such as no arrears, no arrears of wages in Zhejiang, and the construction of a new type of political and business relationship that is pro-Qing and unified. The "Regulations on Optimizing the Business Environment of Zhejiang Province", which came into effect on March 1, also focuses on "giving active support to small, medium and micro enterprises, individual industrial and commercial households, etc.", and "responding to everything and not disturbing anything".
The construction of Jiangsu's business environment is characterized by "empowering the construction of a modern industrial system", and is committed to providing local manufacturers with first-class quality and standardized testing systems. In 2023, Jiangsu Province has promoted a series of key industrial chain standardization improvement projects, inspection and testing to promote industrial optimization and upgrading, and small and micro enterprise quality certification improvement actions. In the New Year, Jiangsu will continue its efforts in this field.
Anhui's business environment focuses on improving the level of rule of law. Anhui (Hefei) Innovation Legal Zone tries to accelerate the gathering of scarce high-end legal resources and promote the cultivation and introduction of high-end talents in the fields of international commerce, international finance, and intellectual property.
Differences: move forward under pressure, strive for innovation.
In addition to vigorously investing in science and technology innovation projects and improving the business environment, the New Year's work arrangements of the three provinces and one municipality also have their own characteristics.
Shanghai: The construction of the "five centers" of internationalization and institutional opening-up.
In the 2024 Shanghai Municipal Work Report and the Draft National Economic and Social Development Plan (hereinafter referred to as the "Development Plan"), the first priority is to build Shanghai's "five centers" for internationalization.
There are a number of arrangements in place around this goal. The first is to improve Shanghai's international services and facilities. On January 1, the new version of the Shanghai International Service Portal was put into trial operation, which is committed to providing authoritative policy services for foreigners coming to Shanghai. Referring to the advice of expatriates in Shanghai, it has reached the level of "I feel like there is an authentic Shanghai local with me".
Secondly, this year, Shanghai will launch a series of activities around the promotion of international cooperation. The "Tide of Pujiang" Investment in Shanghai Global Sharing Season series of activities lasted from February to June. At the same time, Pudong will support activities such as the Global Operator Program (GOP) and the Global Institutional Investor Summit (GIC).
The most fundamental way to improve the level of internationalization is to rely on institutional opening-up. The "Development Plan" states that "we will steadily expand the opening up of rules, regulations, management, standards and other institutions." "Important "test fields" include the Pudong New Area, the Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Lingang New Area. For example, Shanghai released a new implementation plan in February, allowing financial institutions to transfer data needed for daily operations overseas under the framework of the national security management system for cross-border data transmission.
Zhejiang: Improve the investment system and expand scientific and technological innovation**.
Zhejiang's top New Year's resolutions are all about investment. The first is to arrange provincial financial funds 1023600 million yuan to stimulate the market, and implement and upgrade the "8+4" economic policy system. This system includes eight major policy areas, including expanding effective investment, scientific and technological innovation, and cultivating two trillion-dollar industrial clusters. The tax reduction policy plans to reduce the burden of market operators by more than 250 billion yuan.
At the same time, expand the scale of state-owned assets for the science and technology industry, including "making good use of local special bonds", "special annual planned investment of 20 billion yuan, leveraging social capital of 100 billion yuan, and expanding the scale of provincial science and technology innovation mother". In 2023, Hangzhou will build an industrial cluster with a scale of more than 300 billion yuan; Wenzhou also plans to set up a 50 billion yuan guide**. In 2024, this trend is expected to expand.
The "digital economy" remains a key target industry. The digital economy is Zhejiang's "trump card industry", and the new year will be guided by the in-depth implementation of the "No. 1 Development Project" for digital economy innovation and quality improvement, which is expected to increase the added value of the industry by about 9%, and the digital transformation coverage rate of industrial enterprises above the designated size will reach 85%.
Jiangsu & Anhui: independent scientific research, new industry and cross-border e-commerce.
In the New Year, the priorities of Jiangsu and Anhui are similar. First of all, both Su and Anhui put the improvement of the level of independent scientific research in a very important position. Compared with Jiangsu and Shanghai, the scientific and educational resources of Jiangsu and Anhui are more scattered. In this context, Jiangsu proposed to "promote high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-reliance", and Anhui's work at the top of the article is also to strengthen the construction of "innovative provinces". In terms of specific measures, Su and Anhui plan to start from the construction of national laboratories, "double first-class" universities and research institutes, and the introduction of high-end talents.
Enhance scientific research capabilities and extensively empower the industrial base. Jiangsu New Year proposes to focus on key industries such as the construction of the "1650" industrial system and the "51010" strategic emerging industrial cluster, and carry out actions to improve market competitiveness ("strong chain"), enhance safety and resilience ("supplement chain"), and increase added value ("chain extension"). Anhui intends to "take advantage of the momentum to expand the first automobile industry" and promote the industry to complete the transformation from parts to vehicles; At the same time, Anhui also emphasizes the layout of emerging industries and future industries. In terms of policy tools, Su and Anhui have taken the introduction of high-quality enterprises in key areas as an important idea.
Manufacturing comes first, and exports keep up. In 2023, the procurement of cross-border e-commerce market in Jiangsu will increase by more than 50%; Anhui's exports of "new three" products (new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, solar cells) increased by 116%, of which automobile exports increased by 801%。In the New Year, Su Wan hopes to continue this trend. Jiangsu proposed to implement a three-year action plan for the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce, focusing on the development of "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt" and the layout of overseas warehouses. Anhui's target cross-border e-commerce transaction volume increased by more than 30%, strengthened the "Belt and Road", RCEP and other market development, and accelerated the development of intermediate goods.
In general, in the New Year's development plan of the three provinces and one city, the same or different "plays" all reveal a common idea - under the innovation-driven transformation, the economic development will be driven by investment. It is an "old road" to drive the economy with first-class investment, which has effectively driven the take-off of China's economy, and the investment structure shows the characteristics of inclined to real innovation industries. However, it is important to note that the implementation of ** investment depends on good fiscal and financial conditions.
In the context of China's high debt scale, high currency issuance, and internal and external pressure on the RMB, the actual implementation of the new investment-driven economic policy and its cascading effect on the economic and financial system deserve continuous attention. The effectiveness of strong industrial policies on the development of innovative industries also needs to be tested in practice.
Intern **Jade also contributed to this article).
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