Foshan (Chinese: 佛山; pinyin: Fóshān) is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong province, People's Republic of China. The city has jurisdiction over an area of about 3,840 km² and a population of 5.4 million of which 1.1 million reside in the city proper (2000 census figures).
Total GDP ¥292.67 billion; Per Capita GDP ¥50,207 (2006)
Administration
The prefecture-level city of Foshan administers 5 county-level divisions, all of which are districts.
- Chancheng District (禅城区)
- Nanhai District (南海区)
- Sanshui District (三水区)
- Gaoming District (高明区)
- Shunde District (顺德区)
These are further divided into 64 township-level divisions, including 37 towns and 27 subdistricts.
Transportation and Infrastructure
-Foshan Airport was once a regional airport with mixed usage (both military and domestic transport) since January 22, 1987, as it became a base of China United Airlines (CUA) in Guangdong Province. When CUA ceased domestic flights in November 1, 2002, Foshan Airport remained military service only. The airport resumed its regional airport status in 2005 when the regrouped CUA, which was partly purchased by Shanghai Airlines, resumed domestic flight service. It is expected domestic flight linkages between Foshan and at least 10 Chinese cities including Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Yinchuan will begin in the near future.
-Foshan is close to Guangzhou and considers its link with Guangzhou very important. A Guangzhou-Foshan metropolitan region is being formed as well as the 37-km Guangfo subway line linking the two cities.
-Foshan is a main interchange for railway routes linking Guangzhou, Hong Kong, western Guangdong Province and Guangxi Province. It is connected with Hong Kong via the KCRC Guangdong Through Train service from Foshan railway station. The inter-city through train service was extended from Guangzhous to Foshan in the late 90s.
- China's Ministry of Communications and the Communications Administration of Guangdong Province have jointly approved the planning of constructing Foshan Port in Guangdong in mid-July 2007. The Foshan Port under planning will have a cargo flow of 110 million tonnes by 2010 and 150 million tonnes by 2020. The Foshan authority plans to bring Hong Kong's logistics industry to the port. (NewsTrak D-(Jan. 16, 2008)- Construction on the second phase project of Foshan Aomei Aluminum Co., Ltd., the Southeast Asia's largest aluminum material enterprise, has been completed, bringing the company's annual production capacity to 200,000t. According to a source, Aomei Aluminum is the largest aluminum processing enterprise and largest production base funded and established by Qili Industry Group, it is headquatered in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur and has large production or sales bases in Great Britain, Australia, Hong Kong and Dubai.( www.chinainfoworld.com )
-The first phase of the first specialized logistics distribution base in Foshan City's Sanshui District formally began operations on December 12th, according to the latest news released by Foshan Automobile Transportation Group. The base occupies an area of more than 6.67ha (100mu) and was funded by Foshan Automobile Transportation Group with RMB40M. The base will provide modern logistics services such as storage, distribution, freight forwarding, third party logistics and value-added services of the supply chain, with the designed monthly cargo transportation volume at 60,000t and the truck handling volume exceeding 3,000 units. (China Industry Daily News, 12/14/07)
Economy
Agriculture
There are Agricultural Model Districts (AMD) around the prefecture, such as Shunde Chencun AMD, and AMDs in Daili Town, Shatou Town and Locun Town in Nanhai, with a total area of about 9.4 km². The AMDs aims at providing an all-round environment for modern agriculture. Agricultural process is upgraded through technology, and sale service is incorporated with a new style tourism, that attracts target clients. The modern integrated practice mode resulted in the reputation of the largest base for wholesale, food production, storage and logistics of agricultural products in Guangdong Province.
Following Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Foshan is the third largest manufacturing base in the Pearl River Delta. Once home to a strong State-Owned Enterprises sector, its current economic strength lies in private firms and Township and Village Enterprises in Shunde and Nanhai. In 2002, private firms contributed 56.12% of the industrial output and firms from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan contributed 63.44% in exports.
Key industries in Foshan include:
- household electrical appliance and tool manufacturing
- furniture
- non-metal ore and manufacturing
- ceramics
- garments
- chemicals
- electronic information
- medicine
- food and beverages
- building materials
- automobile parts
- high technologies
- electronics and communications
- stainless steel products
- Plastic products
Towns in Foshan specializing in pillar industries are as follows:
- Beijiao Town, Shunde (顺德北滘) - household electrical appliances
- Chencun Town, Shunde (顺德陈村) - flowers and horticulture
- Dali Town, Nanhai (南海大沥) - aluminium products
- Lecong Town, Shunde (顺德乐从) - furniture production and distribution
- Nanzhuang Town, Nanhai (南海南庄) - building materials
- Xiqiao Town, Nanhai (南海西樵) - tourism and textiles
- Yanbu Town, Nanhai (南海盐步) - underclothes
Several well-known brands to come out of these pillar industries include Midea, Kelon (before its 2005 bankrupcy), Jianlibao, and Galanz Group (Galanz Group and Midea Group jointly hold more than 80% of China's microwave oven market, according to a report by China Market Monitor Co., Ltd.). Foshan's furniture and lighting industry is known as the world's largest, including the world’s largest furniture wholesale market and the world's largest lighting wholesale market.
Development strategy
Foshan aims to become a manufacturing giant and the third largest city in Guangdong. To do this, it has pledged to make large-scale investments in the construction of transportation and energy infrastructure. Urban development will focus on the Central Urban Group and Shunde Urban Group, each with more than one million inhabitants.
-China Development Bank, a policy bank in the country, has granted more than CNY 2 billion loan to Nanhai district, Foshan city, China's southern Guangdong province. The local government used the capital to finish the preliminary construction of Qiandeng Lake and planned to set up a financial business zone there. Guangdong, a developed province in China, wants to build Qiandeng Lake to be a financial high-tech development zone, which covers an area of some 4.5 square kilometers. Chen Yunxian, mayor of Foshan, said that Qiandeng Lake was positioned as a financial logistics base for the province, containing data processing center, call center, disaster recovery center, training center as well as innovation and R&D center.
Companies
- Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. (CMO), the No. 2 manufacturer of thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) panels, plans to set up a LCD module (LCM) production plant in northern Vietnam in 2008 and form a panel-industry cluster in the region, according to company president Ho Chao-yang. Ho said CMO's two LCM plants in mainland China have effectively solved the labor-shortage problem at his company's facilities in Taiwan and cut costs.
- Shanghai. October 16. INTERFAX-CHINA - The Guangdong provincial government announced yesterday that the province's largest LCD module manufacturing line, established by Taiwan-based Chi MeiOptoelectronics in the city of Foshan, has started operation and is expected to produce more than 200,000 units of LCD modules by the end of this year. The line was established with an investment of $480 million and is expected to produce more than 10 million units of LCD modules next year, according to the Guangdong government. Guangdong Province plans to build Foshan into a TFT-LCD TV center by establishing a sound supply chain for the TFT LCD TV industry, including the supply of LCD modules, displays and TV components. Chinese TV giant Hisense also started construction of a flat panel TV manufacturing center in Foshan at the end of September, planning to produce 1 million units of flat panel TVs after completion.
-HSBC opened its thirteenth Global Service Centre in Foshan, Guangdong province on December 3. Vincent Cheng, chairman of HSBC Asia-Pacific, says Foshan is the perfect location to set up a global logistics centre thanks to its outstanding investment environment and urban planning. The new centre is situated at the National High-tech Development Zone in Foshan and is equipped with the most advanced communication and information technology facilities. (NewsTrak Daily, 12/4/07)
- In Guangdong, the home province for Belle International, Foshan-based Saturday Shoe Co., Ltd. has also secured VC investments from Lenovo Capital and is preparing to go public in 2008. "From 2006 on, the prices of raw materials like leather have been on the rise, but our shoe products have to remain where they are now, otherwise we'll lose our competitiveness," explains Wu. Saturday, along with other Chinese shoe brands such as Aokang, Kangnai and Fuguiniao, are also grappling with rising prices for raw materials. "The current net profit margin of the leather shoe industry is about 8%," claims Wu. Despite the rise of raw materials and labor costs, Saturday still has a bigger net profit margin than the industrial average with its higher brand value… Saturday shares the idea of Belle International: maintenance of the department store channel is a part of the brand management, because it gives an opportunity to contact the consumers and to deliver the brand value. Saturday now has over 1,000 sales outlets, 70% of which are self-operated stores and 30% franchised stores. (11/8/07 China Business Feature)
- Zhang Shuhong, a 52-year-old businessman, had apparently committed suicide, just days after Mattel blamed his company, Lee Der Industrial, in Foshan, in southern China, for the recall of one million toys coated in toxic lead paint. In a summer of high-profile recalls of Chinese exports -- pet food, shellfish, tires -- Mr. Zhang's suicide read like the latest twist in a morality play. Each week, it seemed, brought news of another faulty Chinese product; and with it, growing concerns about unscrupulous Chinese businessmen: cutting corners; pouring cheap, sometimes lethal, ingredients into their products; endangering consumers around the world, even children, to make a bigger profit. But at the Lee Der factory in Foshan, an industrial city 140 miles northwest of Hong Kong, Mr. Zhang's colleagues and workers tell a less familiar narrative. They say that Mr. Zhang was a victim, too -- of his own duplicitous suppliers, of China's faulty supply chains, and of the pressures of its loosely regulated brand of capitalism, where Chinese entrepreneurs feel squeezed between Western companies' appetite for cheap goods and the fierce local competition to satisfy it. (8/23/07 New York Times)
- The Sanshui District Bureau of Economy and Trade revealed that Tsingtao Beer Sanshui Company will improve its production capacity in 2007 and Budweiser Beer will begin operations in this district at the end of 2008, thus the District's beverage industrial output value is expected to soar in the next one to two years.(China Industry Daily News, 1/14/08)
- Beiqi Foton Motor Co., Ltd. an SOE holding company mainly involved in car manufacturing in China, plans to increase the production capacity of its factory in Nanhai District, Foshan in southern Chinese province of Guangdong. Construction of the new factory is planned to start from May or June 2008. The phase I project is expected to be finished in 2009 and the whole project will be finished in 2015. By then, the new factory, which mainly produces SUVs, pickups, small MPVs and the like, will be four times larger than the old one. It aims to seek sales of more than CNY 5 billion by 2010. (Sinocast, 1/10/08)
- Guangdong Foshan Glanz Co., Ltd., a leading home appliances manufacturer in China, planned to sell 6 million air-conditioners in 2008, with 70% of them sold at home. The company intends to export 30% of output in 2008, higher than 20% in 2007. A report by Boston Consulting Group tells that more and more Chinese people are interested in high-end and expensive products and five times more consumers tends to increase spending than those to reduce. (Sinocast, 1/9/08)
Labor
- More workers in Guangdong Province will be able to negotiate with their employers and fight for higher wages, according to the provincial labor and social security department. The wage negotiation system was first launched in Guangzhou in 2001, and has covered 44,000 enterprises and benefited 2.4 million workers up to June this year. Workers have signed more than 14,000 collective wage agreements with various employers… Workers can nominate representatives or the labor union of their factories to negotiate on their behalf with employers. They can even hire professionals, such as lawyers or consultants, as long as they are familiar with the labor law. (8/15/07, China Daily)
-Guangdong is on the verge of finalizing details of a labor law that will place about 20 million factory workers under better welfare protection but add to the burden of manufacturers already reeling from rising production costs. As a nationwide policy to be promulgated on January 1, the law will set welfare standards and responsibilities of employers and employees by binding the two parties to a labor contract. Welfare protection such as work hours, extra shift compensation, commission and wages, holidays, arrangement for parting and other benefits are expected to be key conditions on a contract, according to some manufacturers in Guangdong. The Guangdong Labor and Social Security Bureau was studying the feasibility of regulating wages such as distribution of wages and setting up a mechanism to lift salaries by engaging about 10 enterprises in Foshan, Guangzhou media reported. (11/19/07 South China Morning Post)
Tax
-(Jan. 14, 2008)- The tax payments by Sanshui District's beverage industry surged by nearly 30% in 2007 and accounted for 12% of the District's total, revealed Foshan City's Sanshui District Office of the State Administration of Taxation. In 2007, Tsingtao Beer Sanshui Company paid more than RMB103M in tax, the highest among Sanshui's tax payers, while the tax payments generated from Jianlibao drink products increased over 2006 and exceeded RMB56M last year. (1/14/08 China Industry Daily News)
GDP
- Calculating based on the data for the third quarter of 2007, Foshan, Ningbo, Nanjing, Chengdu, Dongguan, Wuhan and Dalian have joined the "300-billion-yuan GDP Club" for Chinese cities in 2007. 300 billion yuan is equivalent to US$41 billion. From 2006 to the first three quarters of 2007, annual economic growth in Foshan was 19.2 per cent, 19.3 per cent and 19.2 per cent. (1/2/08, Asia Pulse)
Real Estate
- Shui On Land Limited (" Shui On Land", Stock Code: 0272) today has successfully acquired by auction the development right and land use rights of the land in Zumiao Donghua Lane, Foshan City, Guangdong Province. Shui On Land will capitalise on the huge potential and rapid growth of Foshan to develop an integrated project, aiming to facilitate the transformation of the city into a major economic and cultural hub in Southern China. The site has a planned net developable area of approximately 517,471 square metres with a gross floor area of approximately 1.5 million square metres. The new integrated project will include residential and office buildings, as well as retail, restaurant, entertainment, tourism and cultural facilities. (11/30/07 irasia.com)
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