Guangzhou International Commercial Port is very unusual.

Recently, a project in Guangzhou features an unusually high standard. It has been incorporated into the 15th Five-Year Plan of Guangzhou, with the progress of on-site research in August, land acquisition in September and construction commencement in October. Such a promotion pace is extremely rare. Its name is: Guangzhou International Commercial Port.

On October 8, the Guangzhou International Commercial Port officially broke ground. The total planned area of the entire project is 9.86 square kilometers, which is larger than the whole Zhujiang New Town, with a total construction scale of about 14.5 million ㎡. The first-phase commercial core area under construction has an investment of 32.5 billion yuan, and is scheduled to be put into operation in 2028.

According to other reports, the total long-term investment of the project is about 150 billion yuan. It is planned to be completed in three phases within a maximum of 10 years. On the afternoon of the groundbreaking day, the project launched global investment promotion, securing 154 strategic cooperation projects, with 71 representative projects signed on site.

Why does Guangzhou attach so much importance to this project? Why does it spare no effort to build an international commercial port in Huadu?

There are at least two profound implications behind this: First, Guangzhou is striving to explore new growth space for its millennium-old business capital; second, Guangzhou aims to give full play to the advantage of the aviation hub of Baiyun Airport.

01

Why is the international commercial port suddenly proposed for construction?

First of all, a fact should be clarified: Guangzhou has no shortage of products, no shortage of markets, and no shortage of foreign purchasers.

Guangzhou has 508 specialized markets, gathering about 160,000 merchants with a total annual transaction volume exceeding 1.5 trillion yuan. This is the foundation of Guangzhou's commercial industry, and also the confidence of Guangzhou as a millennium-old business capital.

However, problems also arise here. Guangzhou has a large number of mature specialized markets, but they are relatively scattered, which cannot meet the one-stop procurement demands of foreign merchants. In addition, there are also problems such as insufficient brand building capability and low digitalization level.

At this moment, Yiwu has become a reference case worthy of in-depth research. The outstanding advantages of Yiwu lie not only in its abundant small commodities, but also in its high industrial concentration and high-quality supporting services. It has the Yiwu International Trade City that gathers all kinds of small commodities together. When overseas purchasers come to Yiwu, they can complete one-stop procurement of all categories of goods without traveling around, which greatly improves procurement efficiency.

Guangzhou previously organized a special research trip to Yiwu, and proposed to learn from Yiwu's experience in this field to promote the transformation and upgrading of Guangzhou's commercial industry. Therefore, it is believed that this project aims to draw on Yiwu's market organization capability to re-integrate the scattered commercial resources across the city.

There is another important starting point, namely the Canton Fair. The Canton Fair is held twice a year, with each session divided into multiple exhibition phases, which can attract global purchasers to gather in Guangzhou. However, the exhibition has time limits, while international procurement activities last all year round.

After purchasers finish visiting the exhibition and negotiating orders, they do not have to wait for the next Canton Fair to place new orders. Can Guangzhou provide a year-round open platform for product display, selection, transaction and trade services, so that foreign merchants are willing to come to Guangzhou for business negotiations even in non-exhibition periods?

This is exactly the problem that the Guangzhou International Commercial Port is designed to solve.

If the Canton Fair is responsible for centralized matching of supply and demand, the commercial port will have the opportunity to undertake continuous transactions before, during and after the exhibition, so as to convert the short-term exhibition traffic into long-term trade relations.

Therefore, in addition to learning from Yiwu's experience, the Guangzhou International Commercial Port has a more profound intention: to build a normalized international trade platform, so that Guangzhou's commercial advantages are no longer limited to traditional wholesale markets and the exhibition period of the Canton Fair.

02

Why is Huadu selected as the site? The core factor is Baiyun Airport

This is probably the most thought-provoking part of the whole project. Guangzhou's traditional international convention and exhibition center is located in Pazhou, and its core business districts are concentrated in areas such as Tianhe, Yuexiu and Liwan. However, the international commercial port is located in Huadu, on the northwest side of Baiyun Airport. Why is that?

Is it just because Huadu has a large area of available land? Obviously not. What Guangzhou values is the huge international passenger flow, cargo flow and business resources behind Baiyun Airport. According to the data of this year, Baiyun Airport has become the largest airport in mainland China in terms of passenger flow and the second largest in terms of cargo throughput.

However, the value of an airport is not only reflected in the number of passengers and goods it transports every year, but also in a more important indicator: how much economic activity the massive passenger flow and logistics brought by the airport every day have created for the surrounding locality.

This issue is worth serious consideration for Guangzhou. In the past, when people talked about airport economy, what would first come to their mind? Aircraft maintenance, aircraft leasing, airport-adjacent manufacturing, cross-border logistics, hotel accommodation... These industries are certainly important, but they are far from enough.

The airport economy can be developed to a higher level. Around the world, a very noteworthy trend is that large international airports are evolving from a single transportation hub to a new type of business district with multiple integrated functions.

Atlanta in the United States, Paris, Geneva and Amsterdam in Europe all locate their large convention and exhibition centers near the airport. Domestic cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are also making great efforts to develop the economy around their airports.

The Airport Authority Hong Kong put forward the "Airport City" development blueprint as early as 2019, and later further expanded the plan to integrate functions such as commerce, convention and exhibition, hotels and offices. The AsiaWorld-Expo next to Hong Kong International Airport, as well as projects such as the SkyCity, are all important components of this strategy.

The logic behind these practices is actually very simple: Since people from all over the world come to the airport, why not allow them to do business, hold meetings, consume and even work right next to the airport? In the past, the airport was only a supporting transportation facility of the city. Now, large-scale CBD can also be built around the airport — this change is worthy of reference for Guangzhou.

As Baiyun Airport has a huge aviation network connecting a large number of cities at home and abroad, can international purchasers quickly access the commercial platform right after they get off the plane? Can overseas enterprise representatives complete product selection, contract signing and business negotiations near the airport when they come to Guangzhou for exhibitions? If foreign brands want to enter the Chinese market, can they find agents, logistics providers, financial institutions and professional service agencies here?

If all these things can be completed efficiently around the airport, Huadu will no longer be just a place that passengers pass by, but will have the opportunity to become an important destination for global business activities. This is the most anticipated part of the Guangzhou International Commercial Port.

03

Northern Guangzhou will embrace a repositioning

However, this is not the most important point, because the Guangzhou International Commercial Port has a more far-reaching significance: it may change the role of northern Guangzhou in the city's overall economic pattern.

For a long time, Guangzhou's development strategy has been expanding eastward and southward, with vigorous development momentum in the two directions. Now the western part of Guangzhou is also booming, with Taikoo Li and Mixc both located in the west.

As for the northern part? It has long been a relatively low-profile area. The northern part has important transportation hubs such as Baiyun Airport and Guangzhou North Railway Station, but its advantages have not been fully unleashed. In this sense, the Guangzhou International Commercial Port is the hope for northern Guangzhou to break through the development bottleneck.

On the one hand, it can meet the demand of the transformation and upgrading of Guangzhou's traditional commercial industry, and attract more purchasers and trade enterprises at home and abroad to Huadu. On the other hand, it can rely on the global aviation network of Baiyun Airport to develop conferences and exhibitions, headquarters economy and business services, creating new opportunities for industrial agglomeration.

However, it needs to be emphasized that the success of the Guangzhou International Commercial Port cannot be measured only by the construction area or the number of introduced merchants.

What really matters is whether it can attract global purchasers to visit continuously through high-quality services, and whether it can enable enterprises to obtain higher operating efficiency here than in other places. After all, buildings can be constructed quickly, but professional services and industrial ecosystems require long-term cultivation.

Looking back at the history of Guangzhou as a millennium-old business capital, from the ancient Maritime Silk Road to the Thirteen Hongs of Canton, and then to today's Canton Fair, the commercial prosperity of Guangzhou has always been closely related to one thing: connecting the world.

In the past, Guangzhou relied on seaports and merchant ships, while today it relies on airports, railways, digital trade and modern service industries. The times have changed, and the way of trade has changed, but the urban gene of Guangzhou remains unchanged. The Guangzhou International Commercial Port is exactly the new outlet that the millennium-old business capital is looking for in the new era.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "City War", written by Sun Bushu's team, and authorized for release by 36Kr.