Relying on its environmental and location advantages, Hezhou has made great efforts in its economic, industry, and cultural exchanges to integrate into the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area since it officially became the Guangxi Eastward Integration Pilot Demonstration Area in May last year.

In recent years, Hezhou has developed an enclave economy, which is a cross-regional administrative management and economic cooperation model that divides the administrative division between two or more independent administrative regions to achieve coordinated economic development.

The model has been optimized in Hezhou to a bilateral pattern, in which external enterprises conduct scientific research in the Greater Bay Area and undergo production transformation in Hezhou, as well as local enterprises conduct production, processing, and storage in Hezhou, while conducting sales in the Greater Bay Area.

In order to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, as well as the cultivation of new economies and new business forms, Hezhou has been guided by the market demand of the Greater Bay Area and has introduced a number of major industrial projects.

From January 2019 to March 2020, Hezhou has introduced a total of 351 new investment projects, with a total contract investment of 74.67 billion yuan ($10.44 billion). Among them, 186 new projects were from the Greater Bay Area, with a total contract investment of 29.98 billion yuan.

Hezhou has also taken advantage of the rich talent resources of the Greater Bay Area, which possesses a large number of high-level universities, key laboratories, and scientific research institutions.

Since 2018, Hezhou has signed cooperation agreements with universities and think tanks, such as Jinan University, Shenzhen University, and the Southern Entrepreneurship Service Center. It has introduced 65 domestic and foreign industry leading talents to conduct related activities in the past three years.

In addition, relying on its location and ecological resources, Hezhou has greatly developed its tourism industry, introducing a group of enterprises from the Greater Bay Area to invest and start businesses in the city, as well as attracting a large number of tourists from the Greater Bay Area to come visit, boosting its tourism consumption.