THE Guangdong delegation attending the ongoing annual session of China’s top legislature held an open panel discussion in Beijing on Thursday, with hundreds of journalists from China and abroad in attendance to cover the event.

At the meeting, Huang Kunming, Party chief of Guangdong; Wang Weizhong, governor of Guangdong; Zhang Hu, a member of the Standing Committee of Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and executive vice governor of the province; Shenzhen Mayor Qin Weizhong; and Zeng Jinze, mayor of Zhanjiang City, presented a multifaceted picture of Guangdong’s path to high-quality development and modernization.

Lawmakers gave speeches on hot topics such as new energy vehicles, high-quality development of enterprises, enhancing the capability to exploit deep-sea resources, and building Guangdong into an educationally robust province.

Li Dongsheng, chairman and CEO of TCL Technology Group Corp., said globalization is an inevitable path for the development of Chinese enterprises. He mentioned that China’s manufacturing output now accounts for over 30% of global output, and relying solely on the domestic market is no longer sustainable.

Li emphasized that if businesses do not expand internationally, they risk being marginalized. He urged proactive participation in global industrial chains and competition in international markets.

He said that businesses need to be brave enough to invest in the future to have a future, and they should deploy digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data to develop industrial software and high-end equipment in order to establish modern industrial competence.

Feng Xingya, general manager of Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. Ltd. (GAC), stressed that Guangdong is a major province for new energy vehicles, with one out of every four new energy vehicles in China being made in Guangdong.

Ning Ling, vice president of Guangdong Ocean University, urged the province to become a hub for the deep blue economy and vigorously develop new marine productive forces.

(Li Jing)