[转载]Dongguan

February 25, 2014

Dongguan is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province. Known as "the workshop of the world" in southern China, it has gathered nearly 10 million migrants, including Chinese from central  land and foreigners from all over the world for its export-oriented economy.

Located in the Pearl River Delta, Dongguan borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the north, Huizhou to the northeast, Shenzhen to the south, and the Pearl River to the west. The three neighboring municipalities of Guangzhou, Dongguan and Shenzhen are home to over 25 million residents, accounting for a large proportion of the Pearl River Delta Region's population. City administration is considered especially progressive in seeking foreign direct investment. Dongguan ranks behind only Shenzhen, Shanghai and Suzhou in exports among Chinese cities, with $65.54 billion in shipments.

In addition to being an important manufacturing hub, the city has also earned a more questionable reputation as the "sex capital of China". It is also home to one of the world's largest, though largely empty, shopping mall, New South China Mall.

Dongguan has no intermediate county level; instead it is divided into 32 towns (districts) and each of them is possessing its own distinct characteristics.

Although the earliest traces of human habitation in the area stretch back 5,000 years, Dongguan's emergence as a true city is a recent phenomenon.

In 1839, at the outset of the First Opium War, large quantities of seized opium were burned in the local town of Humen. Several of the major battles of the war were fought here in this area.

During the Second World War, the city served as the base for guerilla resistance against the Japanese occupation.

Dongguan earned city status in 1985, and was upgraded to prefecture city status three years later. During the period the city changed its focus from an agricultural town into a manufacturing hub, with an average annual growth of up to 18%.

The vibrancy here has brought its prosperity. Dongguan ranked 13th in Forbes China's listing of the most innovative Chinese Mainland cities, as well as 18th in Foreign Policy's listing of the most dynamic cities in the world. Today, "Made in Dongguan" is a new key phrase. Dongguan is a place that connects yesterday with the present and the future, opening the doors to modern China: it is a manufacturing center and a "vivid microcosm of the reform and opening of China".

Geographically, the city is mostly hilly to the east and flat in the west, with 115.98 kilometers of shoreline.The urban centre of Dongguan is 50 km away from that of Guangzhou to its north, 90 km away from Shenzhen to its south, 47 nautical miles away from Hong Kong and 48 nautical miles from Macau by waterway. It is positioned in the middle of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen economic corridor, a spot which must pass through by both land and sea transport.

Of the total area of Dongguan, 27% is water, 25% forest land, and 13% ploughed land, while 35% of its land area has been fully developed.

Dongguan has a humid subtropical climate, with abundant sunshine and rainfall over the year. It lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer. The average temperature is 22.8 °C throughout the year. The average rainfall is 1,756.8 millimetres.

Dongguan had an estimated 6,949,800 inhabitants at the end of 2008, among whom 1,748,700 were local residents and 5,201,100 permanent migrants from other parts of the country. At the 2010 Census the population had expanded to 8,220,237. The number reached 8.29 million by the end of 2012, with average population age of 30.82.

Dongguan is also a known hometown for many overseas Chinese, the family origin of over 700,000 people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau and over 200,000 nationals living abroad.

Many foreign travellers to Dongguan fly into Hong Kong, which gives visa on arrival to citizens of over 170 countries. After landing, visitors must apply for a visa to enter Chinese mainland.

One can travel from Hong Kong to Dongguan by bus, ferry or train. Passengers travelling overland must disembark from their transport at the Hong Kong/China border to go through customs and immigration, except for those traveling on the Mass Transit Railway intercity services (former Kowloon-Canton Railway) from Hung Hom Station to Dongguan, Guangzhou and beyond.

Depending on the time of day, using the ferry may be the most convenient way to travel from Hong Kong, as it allows one to avoid long queues at the land border checkpoint between Hong Kong and mainland China.

Dongguan serves as one of the regional railway hub in Guangdong, where Guangzhou-Kowloon Railway, Guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou Railway and Beijing-Kowloon converge.

Rail services in and out of the city call at Dongguan railway station where there are direct train services to Guangzhou East railway station in Guangzhou; and Hung Hom Railway station in Hong Kong.

The Humen Pearl River Bridge is a suspension bridge over the Pearl River. Completed in 1997, it has a main span of 888 metres. Construction work of the Second Humen Pearl River Bridge will start in early 2014.

Among the four railway lines (R1-R4) planned for Dongguan Metro, R2 line is presently under construction and is scheduled to open for operations in early 2015. The R2 Line will link towns in Western Dongguan, thereby promoting the connection of the entire downtown area with Houjie, Humen and Chang'an. It will also support Dongguan's regional transportation with other cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong via joining with the rail transit junctions in the Pearl River Delta.

Dongguan is a major manufacturing hub. The largest industrial sector is manufacturing of electronics and communications equipment; international companies with facilities in Dongguan include DuPont, Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Maersk.

The Dongguan Science & Technology Museum (opened in December 2005), the high tech commerce park in the SongShan Lake district (which debuted in 2003) and a partnership with the Global IT Academy of the Brea Olinda Unified School District in Southern California have demonstrated the city's emphasis on attracting technology business. The city also announced in 2005 a planned investment of US$500 million over five years for technology infrastructure improvements. The city administration is considered especially progressive in seeking foreign direct investment. Among the investments were bringing Brazilian shoemaking industrials as their country had excelled in manufacturing cheap footwear in the 1970s and 1980s. The community, which accounted for 1.753 people in 2013, was at a certain point the largest of Brazilians in China with 4,000.

While the city is the third largest exporting region in China, behind Shanghai and Shenzhen (and a major centre for Taiwanese investment), outside of China, Dongguan has yet to gain the kind of name recognition realized by Shenzhen (just an hour away, and downriver from Dongguan). This may be because the city has emphasised investing in infrastructure, rather than directly targeting major corporations with financial incentives for economic development. Still, Dongguan has been identified by high level representatives of the National Development and Reform Commission of the central government as one of the most significant growth regions for technology in the coming years. As part of this plan the Dongguan local government has announced a plan to create and support a 100-billion-yuan photovoltaic manufacturing industry by 2015.

To cope with the impact of financial crisis, Dongguan city is looking to industrial restructuring, focusing on four pillar platforms - governmental services, supporting measures, technology upgrade and market expansion. The city government claims that this process has already enhanced the city's capability of independent innovation and the quantity of patent applications in 2008.

In Dongguan, manufacturing is prosperous and tertiary industry is booming, with total GDP of 501 billion RMB and the scale proportion of three major industries standing at 0.4:46.9:52.7 in 2012.

Dongguan is a "National Basketball City" and is the only prefecture-level city with 3 professional basketball clubs in China. The Guangdong Southern Tigers was the first professional basketball club in China, having won 8 Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) championships in the past 10 years.

Dongguan Yulan Theater is one of China's newest multipurpose performing arts venues. With its multi-layered exterior suggestive of an unfolding lotus petal, it has become a landmark in Dongguan city. The new cultural hub houses two theatres presenting a full schedule of performances, including Romeo and Juliet and the Chinese classic Butterfly Lovers. So far Dongguan has produced 7 original musicals by its own and made a roadshow of 60 performances in over 30 cities of China.

The city and province have been the recent focus of press and journalist attention with coverage of the arrival of teenaged Chinese workers, principally females (so-called factory girls), from agricultural areas to work in the area's factories and manufacturing/assembly facilities, where many are housed in large domitories, usually several to a room.

An article in the High Tech Misery in China series reports research conducted, over 2008 to 2009, on working conditions at one of the city's major keyboard makers (Dongguan Meitai Plastics & Electronics Factory); in it, Meitai factory won some unwanted attention, due to the disappointing conditions for its young, mostly female workers. The article includes details of those conditions, photos, translations of employer's rules and evidence that well-known computer brands use this keyboard supplier's products.

The city's prostitution sector has mushroomed since the turn of the century, and now employs around one in ten of the enormous migrant labour force, between 500,000 and 800,000 people, including around 300,000 prostitutes, and is estimated to contribute 20 to 30 per cent of the total output of the city's service industry. Another estimate puts the sector's contribution at 40 billion yuan - roughly 10 per cent of Dongguan's gross domestic product. As well as variety of types of brothels, massage parlours, nightclubs, sauna centres and karaoke bars, the city has more than 120 top-end luxury hotels and hundreds of other mid-range places that offer illegal sexual services or lease floors to sex operators, and many parts of the broader service sector benefit from the trade brought by visitors. Although much of the business is illegal, police operations to limit it have been ineffective, in part because many members of the local administration and other officials have business interests in it themselves.