Hometown Memory and Economy

In fact, I didn’t think about what kind of title to give. I just wrote on Weibo about the industrial upgrading of Huidong and Huizhou. As I wrote, my thoughts suddenly burst out. The more I wrote, the more I wrote. Why not Just write it as an article.

I have been fond of observing the surrounding environment, the people around me, and the things around me since I was a child. In addition, I have a good memory. I can always compare memories year by year, decade by decade, and always be able to gain insights with the benefit of hindsight. way to summarize the cause and effect of the situation of people and things at that time.

But after all, the human brain is not good at processing precise things, and memory always has certain deviations, and it is even possible to be completely wrong. The following records may not be accurate.

Huidong was originally an agricultural county, just like most counties in China, not much different. Since the 1980s, there has been a large-scale wave of people fleeing Hong Kong in Guangdong, and a considerable number of Huidong people have fled to Hong Kong. Also because it was close to Hong Kong and close to the sea, and with the help of relatives in Hong Kong, smuggling began in Huidong. Later, smuggling became so serious that Wan Li personally came to Huidong to supervise the war. This wave of smuggling also enriched a group of Huidong people who dared to take risks. It was regarded as the first wave of wealth in Huidong. Many of the rich people in the county now made a lot of money from smuggling. The group of people who fled to Hong Kong also brought a lot of wealth to their families. This wealth can be regarded as the original capital accumulation of Huidong Industry.

In the 1990s, several industrial towns began to appear in Huidong. Daling Town, where I grew up, was one of the major industrial towns. At that time, it was probably Hong Kong and Taiwanese businessmen who came to invest here, mainly in the textile industry. The reason why I remember it was the textile industry is because when I was young, I often heard my mother complain about not learning how to make clothes and make clothes. Many female skilled workers earned quite good incomes.

Around 2000, the textile industry seemed to be in decline, and foreign businessmen also retreated a lot. An aunt who worked in a textile factory gradually had to work less and less. I was in junior high school at that time. A large number of uniformed workers began to appear in the town, and large factories for toys and plastic products such as plastic Christmas trees began to rise.

These factories have so many orders that they are even willing to recruit junior high school students who are idle at home during the winter and summer vacations to rush to produce the goods. Some processes require a lot of manual work, such as dressing gum branches with glue leaves, and many factories outsource these tasks to housewives. For a few years, the streets were full of families making glue flowers. For a year or two, for me, making glue flowers was a nightmare. The price of a single piece was very low, and it was endless repetition. Even if you are poor, you still have to work.

One time when I returned to school after the Spring Festival, on the train back to Nanjing, I listened to the conversations of the students around me, and I realized that students in many places did not have such experience as summer jobs.

The wages in these toy and plastic factories are not high, and many of them require repetitive piecework. In addition, in large factories, discipline requirements are relatively strict. Money will be deducted for latecomers and leave. There are no holidays. Overtime at night is serious. Local workers Most people don't want to work in such factories. A large number of non-local workers entered Huidong, and "Yankee", a term full of discriminatory connotations and a collective term for all non-locals who spoke Mandarin, began to become popular on a large scale.

At the same time, the shoemaking industry began to flourish, and some small family workshops began to receive orders from large companies to process shoe materials, which in turn led to the development of a series of shoe industries. Most of the shoe factories in Huidong are very small. Some are run by a family, and some only hire a few workers. Many locals work in these family-style shoe factories, where the income is relatively high and there are no strict discipline requirements like large factories.

Shoe polisher training and shoe polisher recruitment advertisements began to appear all over the streets (but they all used a typo: Meng). Another aunt worked as a shoe polisher in a shoe factory, and her income was enough for rural families. Envious.

By the time I was in high school, the toy and plastic factories began to decline. Gradually, there were fewer and fewer uniformed workers on the streets, and there were almost no summer job recruitments. Even now, the original factories have Either closed down or retreated and moved away. Huidong's shoemaking industry has reached its peak, with a Yinji Trade City built and a "Same Song" concert held.

It was also during this period that drug trafficking and drug making became more and more common. Once you have money and no guidance, you will easily go astray.

After 2008, one after another the owners of shoe factories and shoe material factories ran away, and people everywhere lamented that business was difficult to do. Workers' wages have also plummeted. From working overtime every day and all night, now they work less than ten months a year, and they no longer have to go to work on weekends. In several shoe markets such as Yinji Trade City, there are fewer and fewer merchants and fewer and fewer people. Advertisements for shoe polishing training are rarely seen on the street. The motorcycle tricycles and small trucks that carry goods all over the street have also disappeared, and the outsiders who speak Mandarin are also gone.

While industry declined, tourism and real estate began to flourish. When I graduated from high school in 2009, my whole class went to the beach. Large areas of the beach were still undeveloped. Now, Vanke, Country Garden, etc. have developed large areas of seaside apartments and mansions, and hotels are lined up on the beach. Due to the influx of too many tourists in a short period of time, the infrastructure has not kept up, and there are traffic jams almost every weekend.

The towns surrounding the county have declined, but the county has developed rapidly. More and more residents from other towns come to the county to buy real estate.

To sum up, Huidong has probably gone through the following stages in the past few decades: Agriculture -> Smuggling (capital accumulation) -> Light textile industry -> Foreign trade toy plastic industry -> Family workshops, small-scale shoe materials, shoe-making industry -> tourism, real estate.

It can be seen from this context of industrial changes that Huidong's several industrial changes have not had much continuity between industries, which also illustrates the failure of Huidong's industrial upgrading. Personally, I feel that two failures at important industrial nodes are the main reasons why Huidong has reached its current situation. First, the light textile industry has not gradually upgraded its technology and deepened its industrial chain like other cities in the Pearl River Delta; second, the decline of family workshops The shoe material industry failed to merge and combine to form large enterprises and brands, and it was unable to realize technology introduction, technological innovation and brand casting. It was in bad luck and faced the financial crisis and foreign trade was weak.

For industry, growing from small to large is a better form of regional economic development. Only large industry can introduce the latest technology, realize technological self-innovation, build a bigger brand, and deepen the industrial chain. Scale workforce skills training. Due to its strict discipline, large industry has improved the quality of the local population. And because of its large size, it has the ability to challenge officials, which in turn can promote the improvement of local officials' governance level. The most typical city is Suzhou.

However, it is also difficult for large industries to create opportunities for local residents to become wealthy. Take the petrochemical project as an example. It is difficult for local residents to have the technology and knowledge to participate in its complete industrial chain. Not to mention the start-up capital that often costs hundreds or tens of millions. A family-run industry usually requires a start-up capital of more than RMB 100,000. If you work diligently and in good years, you can gradually accumulate capital.

Huidong’s industrial changes have shrunk from larger industries to family workshops, and now the focus is on tourism. Industrial upgrading has failed. Even now, the tourism industry is still in a big crisis. The tourism industry is an extremely fragmented industry. Government policies and industry self-discipline are difficult to effectively implement. Once it falls to the level of robbing customers like Sanya, there will be no way back.

Huidong failed, but Huizhou’s industrial upgrading was successful. With large industries such as petrochemicals, electronic information, and automobiles as its pillars, its development speed for several consecutive years has been either first or second in the Pearl River Delta. Personally, the two industrial parks of Daya Bay and Zhongkai are very similar to Singapore's industrial parks. Suzhou has achieved rapid development by introducing such industrial parks from Singapore.

When I was in college, I discussed with my teacher in a class that for a region, the technological strength of the core city is better able to achieve technological innovation. The overall scientific research strength of Jiangsu is higher than the overall scientific research strength of Guangdong, and it can be crushed by the strength of universities alone. There are 11 211 universities in Jiangsu and only 4 in Guangdong. My alma mater, Nanjing University, once had more academicians from the two academies than the entire Guangdong combined. But Guangdong's advantage is that it has two core cities in the country, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Shenzhen relied on companies such as Huawei, ZTE, and BYD to once account for nearly half of the country's invention patents. Only core cities are more likely to open up new industries. Shenzhen's industrial breakthroughs in the Internet, smart hardware, and automobiles have also driven the industrial upgrading of surrounding cities such as Dongguan and Huizhou.

At the current rate at which Shenzhen is driving the development of Huizhou, the Pearl River Delta should be able to add another Dongguan-level city in ten years.

Therefore, depending on whether a place has a future in economic development and whether industrial upgrading is correct, there are actually certain patterns.