Liuzhou impresses visitors with its industrial prowess

Cyclists taking part in the 2018 Tour of Guangxi - one of Asia's top road cycling stage races and part of the International Cycling Union's World Tour - were impressed by Liuzhou's picturesque karst landscapes, luxuriant green mountains and crystal clear rivers.

But the city in Southwest China has more to offer than beautiful scenery and a well-protected environment. First-time visitors may be surprised to hear that it's also an automotive manufacturing hub, producing 2.54 million cars last year, or 8.7 percent of all the automobiles built in China.

As an industrial center since the 1940s, the city boasts many mature industries, capable of making everything "from a needle to a satellite", as the city museum proudly proclaims.

Automobiles, construction machinery and steel products made by companies in Liuzhou are all popular overseas.

The Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, where Liuzhou is located, has been designated by the central government as an important portal linking the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The Belt and Road Initiative, as the two are collectively known, was proposed by China in 2013 to promote cooperation and common development.

Liuzhou has identified further opening-up as key to its development and is eyeing business opportunities for its competitive industries in countries and regions involved in the BRI, thanks to the local government's support for the city's "going out" strategies.

Nowadays, 80 percent of Liuzhou-based LiuGong Machinery's international sales revenue comes from countries and regions taking part in the BRI.

As one of the largest construction machinery manufacturers in China, LiuGong has factories in India, Poland and Brazil, eight marketing branches and eight accessories supply centers, and more than 300 dealers in more than 130 countries and regions.

This network was mostly built over the past 15 years, according to Wang Dong, director of LiuGong's Party committee work department. In 2003, the company vowed to turn its attention toward foreign markets, and from 2011 pivoted away from manufacturing to research and development because of a lack of core components for excavator machines coming from Japan in the wake of that year's Fukushima earthquake.

"We must not let our throats be seized by others like that any longer," said Wang.

"LiuGong has no choice but to upgrade its technology and grasp the know-how itself, to continuously explore the boundary of innovation, if it is to be internationally competitive," said Luo Guobing, vice-president of LiuGong.

"We are set to update the international market's impressions of Chinese construction machinery with better designs, performance and after-sales service."

Zheng Junkang, Party chief of Liuzhou, has long encouraged companies to improve their after-sales service and marketing systems while also expanding worldwide.

"The process of going-out should be carried out in a steady and sure way, and consolidated step by step," said Zheng.

In July, Liuzhou's SGMW - a joint venture between General Motors and Liuzhou Wuling Motors that was founded in 2002 - began producing minivans in its newly finished Indonesian manufacturing base, which has a production capacity of 150,000 units per year and cost $1 billion to build. Initially, the overseas production of the SGMW minivan centered on General Motors' manufacturing bases in Egypt and India. Vehicles started rolling off the production lines there in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

Now, the company has three production bases and four automobile factories in Liuzhou, Chongqing and Qingdao of East China's Shandong province.

It exports finished automobiles to more than 40 countries and regions in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The tight steel wires produced by Liuzhou OVM Machinery Company, a prestressing, construction and engineering services provider, are used in large cable-stayed bridges in more than 50 countries and regions.

Liuzhou exported 360,000 metric tons of steel products, worth $112 million, last year.

"The Belt and Road Initiative provides Liuzhou with opportunities to export not only its products but also industrial capacity," Zheng said. He went on to urge Liuzhou's enterprises to make better use of the opportunities available to them and access the broad market, particularly in Southeast Asia, that the BRI has helped bring about.

(China Daily 10/23/2018 page24)