Guangdong

"Guizhou locals may be as surprised as anyone to host the world’s guitar capital. Not many of them play the instrument. Zheng’an became a guitar hub because a lot of its residents had moved to coastal Guangdong for work, many of them finding employment by coincidence in guitar factories. Then the local government made a big effort ⁠to entice them to return to Guizhou as part of a policy to develop the interior. That effort coincided with a 2012 directive from the State Council (the executive agency of the central government) that encouraged manufacturers to relocate from coastal provinces to inland ones. The document had suggested that Guizhou pursue technologically intensive industries like aerospace or electric vehicle manufacturing. Instead, what Guizhou built was more suitable to its less-skilled realities: the Guitar Culture Industrial Park.⁠"

"The state loves showing footage of big container ships that berth under enormous cranes, plucking from a mosaic of containers. As exports soared, China’s ports became the world’s busiest. [Shanghai alone moved more containers](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor302) in 2022 than all of the US ports combined. China’s export engine sputtered in the early 2000s, not for a lack of ports but for a lack of power in Guangdong. So the state invested in a network of new power plants mostly burning coal. In addition to using fossil fuels, China builds a third to a half of the world’s new wind and solar capacity each year. It is sending renewable energy from its sparse western provinces into its industrialized eastern provinces."

"Hitting these numbers required escalating coercive tactics. The first measure in the official toolbox was browbeating. Local officials would visit pregnant women as part of “persuasion groups.” This posse of up to ten men seldom appeared as sweet-tongued advocates. One American academic witnessed a group of women in Guangdong separated from their husbands and sent to the village hall. There, they were given unceasing lectures to give up their pregnancy for the good of the country, and then were called upon one by one to give their consent to an abortion while being [prohibited from returning home](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor410) until they had done so. A 1982 *New York Times* report quoted a family planning official from Guangdong saying, “On average, each person takes 10 times to be persuaded. The most difficult person can take up to 100 times.” The piece also cites women [hauled before mass rallies](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor411) and harangued into consenting to an abortion."

"BYD was founded in 1995 and is a private high-tech enterprise. At the beginning of its establishment, BYD had only 20 employees and was virtually unknown in Shenzhen, a city filled with many enterprises. However, unexpectedly, 14 years later, it developed into a high-tech private enterprise listed in Hong Kong. Now, BYD has built nine major production bases in Guangdong, Beijing, Shaanxi, Shanghai, and other places, covering nearly 7 million square meters in total area, and has branches or offices in the United States, Europe, Japan, and other places, with a total of more than 130,000 employees and total assets of nearly 35 billion yuan."

"“The central government has control over personnel, whereas subnational governments run the bulk of the economy; and they initiate, negotiate, implement, divert, and resist reforms, policies, rules, and laws.” Such decentralization allowed for experimentation on a grand scale: what worked in Guangdong could be replicated in Shanghai. But Beijing was often patient: It waited for the results of these experiments rather than rushing ahead with them. This combination of decentralized decision-making, experimentation, and gradual adoption of new policies played a critical role in how China became a manufacturing powerhouse."