The trend of enterprise inward migration has gradually revealed the "earthquake" of the OEM industry in the Pearl River Delta Region.

The Foxconn event is absolutely symbolic for the Pearl River Delta.

The follow-up impact of workers’ salary increases is gradually emerging, and the high cost pressure brought by this is testing the labor-intensive enterprises in the PRD. In fact, not only the labor costs are high, but other things such as the appreciation of the renminbi, the foreign trade environment have not been fully restored, and the international economic situation remains. Uncertainty is a road in front of businesses. At present, Foxconn has decided to move to Langfang, Hebei, and more companies are also actively visiting the mainland to seek opportunities to land.

The Pearl River Delta industrial cluster that provoked the "Made in China" beam is experiencing severe shocks. If the new high-value-added industries largely leave the Pearl River Delta, what remains is the most basic generation processing industry. Where does the future of the Pearl River Delta go?

In the 1980s and 1990s, the manufacturing of textiles, clothing, toys, shoes and hats, and electronics in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan moved to Guangdong in large scale. About 90,000 processing trade companies across the country, about 70,000 in Guangdong, gave birth to a rapid processing trade in Guangdong. It has developed and brought Guangdong's foreign trade into a glorious era. From 1986 to the present, the total value of imports and exports in Guangdong has been steadily sitting in the top spot among the provinces.

However, changes have always come so quickly that the original advantages of Guangdong's foreign trade are gradually turning into disadvantages. The contradiction between the nature of the cheap labor of processing trade and the current rising production costs in the Pearl River Delta is intensifying.

Moreover, this year, China’s foreign trade rebounded sharply with the gradual recovery of the international economy, but Guangdong's foreign trade growth has clearly lagged behind the national overall level and the Yangtze River Delta. According to statistics from China Customs, the total foreign trade import and export value of Guangdong Province from January to May 2010 was 279.37 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 34% over the same period of the previous year (below), which was lower than the national growth rate of 44%. During the same period, Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang accounted for 174.29 billion U.S. dollars, 139.33 billion U.S. dollars, and 94.75 billion U.S. dollars, respectively, with increases of 50.1%, 43.6%, and 41.4%, respectively.

Zhou Shichen, executive director of the China Institute of International Trade, told the First Financial Daily that the labor costs and resource prices have risen rapidly this year. The impact of processing trade on both sides has been significantly greater than that of general trade. This is the growth rate of the Pearl River Delta, which accounts for the bulk of processing trade. The main reason in the country. The processing trade relied mainly on cheap costs, and Guangdong’s advantages in this area continued to be lost. With wages raised by OEMs such as Foxconn, the growth rate of processing trade in Guangdong in the second half of this year may be lower than that in the first half of the year.

The data released by the Guangdong Branch of the General Administration of Customs can also be seen that this year's processing trade in Guangdong is weaker than that of general trade. From January to May of this year, Guangdong's processing trade imports and exports 155.67 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 29.9%, accounting for 55.7% of the total value of imports and exports of Guangdong; and general trade imports and exports of 98.62 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 43%, accounting for 35.3% of the total import and export value of Guangdong. %.

More importantly, in recent years, the proportion of Guangdong's imports and exports in the country has shown a downward trend. According to the relevant materials of the Guangdong Provincial Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau, it accounted for 30.1% of the country in 2005 and fell to 26.7% in 2008. Only in 2009 was a special situation, which rose back to 27.7%.

Zhou Shiji pointed out that this was mainly because the financial crisis led to the decline in the prices of international raw materials and the temporary decline in the cost of labor in Guangdong, which gave breathing opportunities to the processing trade and prompted Guangdong's foreign trade to be slightly better than the whole country. However, the processing trade is hampered by foreign customers, and there is a lot of transformation and upgrading. It is difficult to achieve results in a short period of time. It takes at least 3 to 5 years or even 10 years.

The reporter learned from the internal data of the Guangdong Provincial Department of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation this year that the Office believes that although a lot of work has been done to promote structural adjustment and changes in the mode of economic development, some achievements have been achieved, but overall the development mode of foreign trade has only changed. Initially, the characteristics of extensive development are still obvious. From the internal conditions, the long-term accumulation of qualitative and structural contradictions in Guangdong Province is still outstanding, and the weakening of competitive advantages has gradually emerged. This is mainly reflected in three aspects: the weakening of low-cost advantages of land and labor, the inability of independent innovation of SMEs, and the lack of factors and conditions for determining future competitive advantages.

Zhou Shiji believes that the restructuring of Guangdong's foreign trade is a matter of no delay, and processing trade must extend toward deep processing and high added value in the current situation. Guangdong still has advantages in capital, overseas channels, and geographical location. It uses capital advantages to introduce more technology. Talents, change the over-reliance on the extensive development model of migrant workers, and deepen cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao, ASEAN and other regions.

According to Ding Li, director of the Department of Scientific Research of the Guangdong Provincial Academy of Social Sciences and deputy director of the Urban Regional Competitiveness Research Center, the Pearl River Delta’s lack of potential for foreign trade development has a certain relationship with the industrial structure. Labor-intensive processing trade products such as electronic processing, textile and clothing, shoes and hats, etc. The proportion is relatively large and the technical content is not high. The heavy industry such as steel, automobile manufacturing, aerospace, shipbuilding, and heavy equipment in the Yangtze River Delta, with Shanghai as the center, has a large proportion and has strong technical force. In addition, multinational companies have significantly more investment in the Yangtze River Delta than the Pearl River Delta.