Guangdong Province

TL;DR

Guangdong: 14T+ yuan GDP (first ever), 9T yuan trade (39th year #1)—70% of global drones, 40% of smartphones manufactured here.

region in China

By Alex Denne

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Guangdong Province

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Guangdong is China's economic apex predator—the first province to exceed 14 trillion yuan in GDP (2024), maintaining its top position for the 36th consecutive year. More remarkably, its import and export volume surpassed 9 trillion yuan for the first time, securing the national trade crown for the 39th straight year and contributing 38.7% of China's total trade growth.

The province functions as the world's factory floor at unprecedented scale. Guangdong produces 70% of global consumer drones, 40% of global smartphones, one in four of China's new energy vehicles, 44% of national industrial robots, and 40% of domestic smartphones. Emerging industries surge: NEV output up 43%, industrial robots up 31.2%, integrated circuits up 21%. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou science cluster ranked second globally for the fifth consecutive year.

Manufacturing's dominance proved strategically vital as real estate contracted—industrial output contributed 50% of GDP growth, offsetting property sector adjustments. R&D investment intensity reaches 3.6%, with 77,000 high-tech enterprises operating in the province. From January to October 2025, trade grew 3.7% year-on-year to 7.8 trillion yuan, with exports of 3D printers up 18.4%, drones up 40.3%, and solar cells/lithium batteries/EVs up 32.6%.

The 2025 target of approximately 5% GDP growth positions Guangdong to implement a 'more proactive opening-up strategy.' When a single province contains such manufacturing density, global supply chains effectively run through its Pearl River Delta factories.

Related Mechanisms for Guangdong Province

Related Organisms for Guangdong Province

Locations in Guangdong Province

ChaozhouA 1,100-year ceramics tradition that now controls half of China's toilet production — adaptive radiation from porcelain art to smart sanitary ware at global scale.DongguanA city of 10.5 million where 8 million migrant workers build one-quarter of the world's smartphones — source-sink labour dynamics powering ¥1.23 trillion in output.FoshanThe city that gave the world Wing Chun, Bruce Lee, and 500 years of continuous ceramic firing now runs a trillion-yuan manufacturing base in Guangzhou's shadow—cultural transmission at industrial scale.GuangzhouChina's 2,200-year open window: Guangzhou kept trading when every dynasty shut the door—sole port under the Qing, only fair under Mao, now anchoring a $1.94T provincial economy.HuizhouProduces one-sixth of China's mobile phones and a quarter of the world's guitars — a Pearl River Delta node that grows by absorbing whatever manufacturing overflows from Shenzhen.JiangmenAncestral homeland of four million overseas Chinese across 107 countries — a mycorrhizal network that exported people for 160 years, then reversed to export manufactured goods.JieyangHomeland of the Teochew diaspora—one of Asia's richest merchant networks—Jieyang processes 90% of China's jade yet has Guangdong's lowest GDP per capita, a source-sink paradox where wealth flows out through kinship networks faster than it returns.MaomingChina's largest refinery and the world's lychee capital share a city — 13.5M tonnes of crude and 1,933-year-old fruit trees coexist through resource partitioning.ShantouOne of China's original 5 SEZs that never took off — its 10-million-person Teochew diaspora sends philanthropy instead of venture capital, while Shenzhen captured the investment.ShenzhenFrom 30,000 fishermen to 17.8M people in 43 years—Shenzhen's adaptive radiation created Huawei, Tencent, DJI, and BYD through open-source hardware culture that outcompeted Silicon Valley's patent model.YangjiangOne knife company per 650 residents: Yangjiang produces 70% of China's cutlery and 85% of its knife exports through a 1,400-year vertical supply chain monopoly.Yunfu'Stone Capital of China' with 5,200 stone enterprises, 400 years of quarrying expertise, China's largest pyrite reserves, and Guangdong's biggest inland river port. Path dependence made architectural.ZhanjiangChina's 'shrimp capital' breeds 160 billion fingerlings annually while hosting BASF's €10B complex and Baosteel's hydrogen steel — r-strategy at city scale.ZhaoqingThe Greater Bay Area's largest and least developed city is undergoing ecological succession — XPeng's factory triggered a 100-company NEV supply chain that spreads like bamboo rhizomes.ZhongshanNamed after Sun Yat-sen and once a reform-era pioneer, Zhongshan peaked in 2012. Now betting a 24-km sea bridge to Shenzhen will convert geographic centrality into economic revival—or risk becoming a suburb of China's tech capital.