In The Past 20 Years, the Revenue Has Increased by More Than 10 Times, and We Can See the Growth Of “Sweet Potatoes” in Wenzhou Enterprises

At the "First Meeting of the New Year" in 2023, the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee clearly proposed to vigorously promote opening up and upgrade, accelerate the creation of a high-level open province, and implement the "sweet potato economy" to upgrade the "No. 1 Opening Project".

What is "sweet potato economy"? In 2004, Comrade Xi Jinping once made a scientific and incisive discussion in the article "Achieving Greater Development in a Larger Space" --- the vines of sweet potatoes extend in all directions in order to absorb more sunlight, rain and nutrients, but it The tubers are always at the root base, and the extension and expansion of the vines ultimately make the tubers grow thicker and bigger. It can be said that behind the "sweet potato economy" is the development model of "seeking space from opening up" and the strategic thinking of "jumping out of Zhejiang to develop Zhejiang", revealing the dialectical relationship between "holding a firm foothold" and "expanding opening up".

"Constantly improving the level of internal and external opening up" is also one of the important contents of the "88th Strategy". Over the past 20 years, Zhejiang has firmly grasped the golden business card of "open economy", deeply participated in the global industrial division of labor and cooperation, orderly promoted enterprises to go out at a high level, and brought in high-quality enterprises, and promoted the upgrading of the comprehensive strength of domestic and foreign trade, so that Zhejiang's economy Rise and thrive in the open.

Go Out into the World

There are more than 6 million Zhejiang merchants in Zhejiang, and more than 2 million Zhejiang merchants all over the world. They are like the vines of the "sweet potato economy" stretching all over the world, absorbing more sunshine, rain and nutrients.

At 8 o'clock in the morning, Delixi's Yueqing production base was already in full swing. At the same time, in the Wuhu Industrial Park of Delixi Electric in Anhui Province, robotic arms equipped with visual sensing devices danced flexibly to assemble precise workpieces.

Recalling the situation when Comrade Xi Jinping came to Delixi for investigation, Hu Chenghu, the senior vice president of the group, was full of emotion: "At that time, Delixi Group tried to develop nationally through various methods, but Hu Cheng, the chairman of the board of directors of the group, had no idea Comrade Xi Jinping encouraged us to say that the provincial party committee and the provincial government support you to 'go out', not only to seize the national market, but also to seize the international market."

Comrade Xi Jinping's words gave Delixi a "peace of mind". After that, Delixi moved its R&D center to Shanghai, and set up production bases in Wuhu, Anhui, and Puyang, Henan. Today, Delixi's "vines" have extended to Russia, Brazil, India, Turkey and Spain. "By going global, we have achieved lean production and promoted the interconnection of factory informatization and industrial automation. In the past 20 years, our annual revenue has increased by more than 10 times." Hu Chenghu said.

The process of Delixi's development and growth through "going out" is inseparable from the support of the local government. Yu Liqing, party secretary of the Wenzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce, told reporters that Wenzhou has promoted the establishment of 6 overseas economic and trade cooperation zones above the provincial level, making it the prefecture-level city with the most national-level overseas parks.

The process of Delixi's determination to "go global" is the epitome of many private enterprises in Zhejiang. At that time, due to the relative lack of factors and natural resources in Zhejiang, private enterprises faced development bottlenecks. As a result, Zhejiang people, who have always had an open and outgoing attitude, began to accelerate the pace of investing in other provinces. However, there are different voices on how to view the phenomenon of local enterprises "blossoming outside the wall". Comrade Xi Jinping has made it clear through many surveys that under the conditions of a market economy, the optimal allocation and cross-regional flow of production factors is an inevitable law. "Based on Zhejiang to develop Zhejiang, jump out of Zhejiang to develop Zhejiang" has thus become an important development concept of Zhejiang.

Over the past 20 years, Zhejiang has always attached great importance to the "going out" of enterprises. As of 2022, Zhejiang has established more than 500 overseas enterprises, and its registered foreign investment has exceeded US$45 billion, covering 63 countries and regions.

Introduce a Powerful Zhejiang

The extension of the vines is to make the tubers grow thicker and bigger, and the "roots" of sweet potatoes are always stuck in the place where they germinate.

At 10:00 in the morning, Dr. Gao Zongchun from the Surfactant Research Institute was busy developing low-temperature soaping technology in the Transfar Chemical Global R&D Center located in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou. This technology can effectively reduce the environmental pollution of the textile industry.

The laboratory area of this research and development center exceeds 20,000 square meters, equipped with precision analytical instruments worth more than 100 million yuan, and currently has more than 1,000 professional and technical personnel with bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. "We have many R&D centers around the world, but the headquarters R&D center has the strongest technical capabilities." Chen Jie, President of Transfar Group, said: "Zhejiang has our group headquarters, logistics headquarters, and chemical headquarters bases. Our main profit Contributions and tax contributions are also in Zhejiang, and will further increase local investment in the future.”

Zhejiang regards making bigger and stronger chain main enterprises and headquarters economy an important starting point for developing the "sweet potato economy". At the beginning of this year, Hangzhou launched the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Hangzhou Headquarters Economy" and set a goal: by 2025, the number of headquarters enterprises will increase by more than 100, and the number of headquarters enterprises with a scale of 10 billion will exceed 60, with a total of 100 billion There are more than 10 level headquarters enterprises.

"Sweet potato economy" is also a kind of feedback economy. At the 2005 Zhejiang Entrepreneurs Forum Summit, Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out that we not only encourage and support Zhejiang Entrepreneurs' "going out" development, but also advocate and support overseas Zhejiang Entrepreneurs to actively repay their hometowns, actively return to their hometowns to invest, and participate in their hometown construction.

On December 23 last year, the 6th World Zhejiang Entrepreneurs Conference was held, attracting a total of 78 projects with a total investment of 369.9 billion yuan, the highest ever. At the opening ceremony, 24 projects were signed, including 11 projects with an investment of more than 5 billion yuan, mainly centering on the "415X" advanced manufacturing cluster, with distinctive industrial characteristics and high technological content.

Build a Hub to Travel the World

The rapid expansion of industrial vines requires a modern logistics service system linking the world to ensure the smooth flow of the international supply chain.

On the afternoon of May 4th, the "Yixinou" China-Europe Railway Express, fully loaded with 100 TEUs of department store commodities, set off from the Yiwu Railway Port to Eurasia. A few minutes later, the sea-rail intermodal train loaded with 100 TEUs of export goods departed from Yiwu Railway West Station to Ningbo Zhoushan Port Beilun Station.

According to the data provided by the International Land Port Group, in the first quarter of this year, Yiwu sea-rail combined transport shipped a total of 20,756 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 3.75%. "Ningbo Zhoushan Port is an important 'outlet' for Yiwu manufacturing." Mr. Liu, the person in charge of a logistics company in Yiwu, told reporters that these export commodities have enjoyed the integration brought about by the opening of the Yiwu-Zhouzhou Channel and the construction of the "Sixth Port Area". Convenience, some goods entering Yiwu Port are regarded as entering Ningbo Zhoushan Port, realizing "one declaration, one inspection, one release".

The "Yixinou" train, Ningbo Zhoushan Port, Yiyongzhou Open Channel, and the ongoing Jinliwen Open Channel have improved the ability to allocate bulk commodities and provided important support for the high-quality development of Zhejiang's foreign trade. According to statistics from Hangzhou Customs, in the first quarter, Zhejiang's import and export data both returned to positive year-on-year growth, and its export scale ranked second in the country; the total value of imports and exports was 1.13 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%.

Foreign trade is the advantage of our province. Comrade Xi Jinping proposed at the Provincial Economic Work Conference on December 20, 2004 to accelerate the transformation of foreign trade growth mode and promote the transformation of foreign trade from quantity growth to quality. Faced with an increasingly complex external environment, Zhejiang will make a transition from a world of "trade" to a world of "production" and "smart". In recent years, the export of high-tech products in Zhejiang has continued to increase, and the total value has risen from 99.49 billion yuan in 2011 to 202.54 billion yuan in 2020.

"Zhejiang has made great efforts in terms of institutional mechanisms, policy measures, and ecological systems, and has made every effort to promote new trade models and new formats to be tested first and become a trend." Li Lin, deputy director of the Foreign Trade Development Department of the Provincial Department of Commerce, said that overseas warehouses are optimized. The key node of the international supply chain layout, our province has built nearly 1,000 overseas warehouses, covering 69 countries and 195 cities around the world.

Zhejiang is located on the southeast coast of the open "window". Only by making the vines of "sweet potatoes" longer and longer, making the rhizomes of "sweet potatoes" longer and stronger, and making the "sweet potato economy" more plowed and sweeter, can we contribute to high-quality economic development. Inject new momentum.