As the Spring Festival approaches, Yantian Port in Shenzhen is bustling with containers loaded with various electronic products, mechanical equipment, and light industrial products being loaded onto ships. In 2024, Yantian Port will add 6 new international routes with a container throughput of over 15.03 million TEUs. From the Pearl River to Shilong, Dongguan, the "China Europe Train", full of electronic accessories, LED lamps and daily necessities, starts from Shilong, Dongguan and runs to Rotterdam, Netherlands. In 2024, 927 China Europe Central Asia freight trains will depart from the Pearl River Delta, forming a "steel camel caravan" connecting the world. Further north, at the cargo terminal of Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, various high-tech products are gathered, waiting to be shipped to various parts of the world. In 2024, the air cargo and mail volume of Baiyun Airport exceeded 2.38 million tons, ranking among the top 10 in the world... In the whole year of 2024, Guangdong's foreign trade import and export reached 9.11 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.8%, ranking first in the country for 39 consecutive years, contributing 38.7% of the country's trade increment. As the vanguard, pioneer, and experimental zone of China's reform and opening up, Guangdong has withstood the pressure, stabilized its scale, and demonstrated strong resilience and vitality in the complex and ever-changing international environment under increasing global economic downturn pressure, continuous trade frictions, and high uncertainty. Foreign trade, foreign investment, outsourcing, foreign economy, and foreign intelligence - "Five External Linkages" to create new competitiveness. Entering the Midea Dishwasher Factory located in Beijiao Town, Shunde District, Foshan City, with thousands of square meters of factory space, automatic guided transport vehicles shuttle flexibly, and robotic arms dance in an orderly manner. After achieving digital transformation, this dishwasher factory can produce one dishwasher every 26 seconds, accounting for 70% of the total export volume of domestic dishwashers. After 10 years of digital transformation, Midea has invested over 20 billion yuan and currently serves approximately 500 million users in over 200 countries and regions worldwide. Midea is globally allocating core resources such as research and development, manufacturing, supply chain, and talent to build a second home, "said Fang Hongbo, Chairman of Midea Group. Faced with the complex and ever-changing foreign trade situation, foreign trade enterprises in Guangdong Province have cultivated their internal strength through digitization and diversified development of emerging markets, demonstrating tenacious resilience and strong growth momentum. The development confidence of foreign trade enterprises comes from the precise support of policies. The Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Government have proposed to promote the "five foreign linkage" of foreign trade, foreign investment, outsourcing, foreign economy, and foreign intelligence, build a new system of higher-level open economy, comprehensively enhance Guangdong's position in the global industrial chain, supply chain, and value chain, and promote the construction of a strong trade province to a new level. Guangdong has also successively introduced a series of policy measures such as the "8 Measures for Stabilizing Foreign Trade" and the "14 Measures for Integrating Domestic and Foreign Trade", building a strong and effective policy support system. A batch of iconic major projects have arrived as scheduled. On the coast of the South China Sea and by the Daya Bay, the third phase of the ethylene and carbon projects of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Shell in Huizhou have fully started construction. At the Global Investment Promotion Conference for High end Petrochemical New Materials held simultaneously, 94 projects with a total investment of 92.9 billion yuan were landed in the Huizhou New Materials Industrial Park. With the deepening implementation of the "Five External Links", Guangdong is forming a hub region for global high-end factor aggregation and resource allocation. This batch of goods has been transferred to sea, which is three days faster than before At the Gaoxin Port in Jiangmen, Guangdong, Zhang Cunrong, the head of the logistics team at Hisense International Marketing Company, discovered that containers loaded with household appliances only need one customs clearance to connect to Shenzhen Shekou Port and be shipped overseas. This is Guangdong Jiangmen exporting goods through the "combined port" model in the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area. The "combination port" model refers to the use of Nansha Port in Guangzhou, Shekou Port in Shenzhen, and Yantian Port as hub ports, and river ports in the Pearl River Delta as branch ports. Through different customs supervision and mutual recognition, enterprises are allowed to directly handle customs inspection, release, and container return procedures at branch ports. Branch ports can share the resources of hub ports as international ports, facilitating foreign trade exports. At present, Guangdong has opened a total of 43 "combination port" routes, which not only achieve full coverage of 9 cities in the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area, but also extend the radiation range to the eastern and western regions of Guangdong. The average storage period of goods in major ports has been shortened from 5-7 days to 2 days. In addition, Guangdong has innovated the cross-border sea air intermodal transportation mode, built the Hong Kong International Airport Dongguan Airport Center, reduced logistics costs for enterprises by about 30%, and improved logistics efficiency by 20%. Currently, the import and export value has exceeded 10 billion yuan, serving over a thousand enterprises. Creating a trillion level export industry cluster - New quality productivity stimulates new vitality in foreign trade. At the Paris Olympics, 1100 drones outlined the Olympic rings and torchbearers above the Eiffel Tower, illuminating the night sky of Paris. These drones are all from Shenzhen enterprise Gaoju Innovation. In recent years, Guangdong has vigorously developed the low altitude economy and established a complete independent research and development and strong production supporting system. The highly innovative drone light show and fireworks show have shone brightly in front of the world, breaking into a new blue ocean of high-tech product exports. Faced with a complex and severe external environment, the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Government adhere to the principle of leading the manufacturing industry and consolidating the industrial foundation; Promote the implementation of the "big industry" pillar and beam action, and drive the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure through innovation. At the Nansha Automobile Terminal of Guangzhou Port located on Shazai Island in Nansha District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, a group of new energy vehicles from Guangzhou Automobile Group boarded the ship in an orderly manner as the car roll on/roll off ships docked at the terminal were busy with loading and unloading operations. In 2024, GAC Group exported a total of 127000 vehicles for the year, a year-on-year increase of 67.6%. At the nearby Longxue Island Shipbuilding Base in Nansha, Guangzhou, a BYD 7000 car dual fuel ocean going transport ship has just been delivered. BYD has built 8 such car ocean going transport ships in different shipyards, and after all are delivered, BYD will have the largest car roll on/roll off ship "sea going fleet" in the country. The automobile industry is the 8th "trillion level" strategic industrial cluster cultivated in Guangdong. In 2024, Guangdong's new energy vehicle production will increase by 43%, and exports will increase by 41.4%. Guangdong regards industrial technological innovation and the development of new quality productivity as strategic measures and long-term strategies, and aims to build an industrial technological innovation center with global influence Zhang Jinsong, Director of the Department of Commerce of Guangdong Province, said that it is expected that the province's R&D expenditure will be about 510 billion yuan in 2024, with about 77000 high-tech enterprises and regional innovation capabilities ranking first in the country for eight consecutive years. Guangdong focuses on developing 20 strategic industrial clusters, including new energy, ultra high definition video display, biomedicine, and high-end equipment manufacturing, around the mutual promotion of technological innovation and industrial development, with a focus on building a number of trillion yuan and trillion yuan export industrial clusters, such as electronic information, modern light industry and textile, intelligent home appliances, and new energy storage, to continuously strengthen the "chassis" of foreign trade. On the Pacific Ocean, container ships loaded with TCL semiconductor display screens are rushing at full speed to the port of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where these products will be put on the local television production line. We have achieved a transformation and upgrading from exporting products to exporting industrial capabilities, and have developed from a domestic industry chain 'chain leader' to an overseas regional industry chain 'chain leader', "said Li Dongsheng, founder and chairman of TCL. Whether it is traditional export advantage industries such as mobile phones, computers, and household appliances, or the "new three" such as lithium-ion batteries, electric manned vehicles, and solar cells, "Guangdong Intelligent Manufacturing" has shone brightly in overseas markets. In 2024, Guangdong's export of mechanical and electrical products reached 3.87 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.8%, accounting for 65.6% of the total export value; Household appliances increased by 14.6%, while major export commodities such as automatic data processing equipment and its components, integrated circuits, etc. increased by 15.3% and 15.27% respectively; 3D printers and drones increased by 45.2% and 20.1% respectively. Huang Min, the head of Yunqi Huihuang Decoration Production Factory in Zhongcun Town, Panyu District, Guangzhou, sighed, "Since switching to cross-border e-commerce, I feel like I have 48 hours of business to do in a day -16 hours in Vancouver, 5 hours in Auckland, and 8 hours in London..." Facing customers from different time zones around the world, his team starts discussing style design, organizing shipment consolidation, and conducting sales communication from 8 am every day until after midnight. Cross border e-commerce practitioners like Huang Min have already formed a "circle" in Panyu District. Cross border e-commerce has become a new engine for Guangdong's foreign trade growth, with an average growth rate of 71.4% from 2015 to 2023. From January to November 2024, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce in Guangdong Province reached 687.65 billion yuan, ranking first in the country in terms of total volume. Focusing on the construction of a "cross-border e-commerce city", Guangzhou, known as the "millennium commercial capital", has revitalized and cultivated 24 cross-border e-commerce industrial parks, gathering a large number of international and domestic leading enterprises such as Xiyin, Vipshop, and Doraemon, forming a complete industrial chain including platforms, logistics, warehousing, transportation, marketing, etc. By November 2024, the total import and export value of foreign trade in Guangzhou reached 1007.49 billion yuan, with cross-border e-commerce accounting for nearly 20% of the city's foreign trade. At present, Guangdong is building 20 "industrial clusters+cross-border e-commerce" parks, cultivating a group of leading enterprises in cross-border e-commerce with a scale of billions. Entering Warehouse 7 of Shenzhen International Express Operations Center, a cross-border e-commerce transport vehicle entered the Shenzhen Customs Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Supervision Operation Area. The robotic arm skillfully picked up packages from the truck and placed them on the sorting line. Each package queued up and entered the six sided scanner to read the waybill information. It only took 22 seconds for a single package to clear customs. We conducted research on the pain points of enterprise customs clearance, combined with the requirements for goods and personnel in the customs inspection process, innovated the artificial intelligence cross-border package supervision mode, and achieved full process digital supervision Wang Hua, Deputy Director of Customs at the Shenzhen Customs Post Office, said. Innovative measures to facilitate customs clearance, improve cross-border e-commerce retail export return mechanisms, accelerate overseas warehouse layout, and build intelligent multimodal transport stations centered on airports, railways, and ports... Guangdong is accelerating the promotion of the "Express Shipping" project, reducing transportation costs, improving logistics efficiency, and better serving the development of cross-border e-commerce. Not only cross-border e-commerce, but in recent years, Guangdong has actively cultivated innovative formats such as high-end manufacturing and digital trade, accumulating a continuous stream of momentum for Guangdong's foreign trade. Building a market-oriented, rule of law, and international business environment, strengthening integration with international economic and trade rules, promoting trade and investment liberalization and facilitation... In the journey from a "trading powerhouse" to a "trading powerhouse", Guangdong Province continues to enrich its "toolbox", shape new advantages, and always play a "main force" and "vanguard" role in China's foreign trade field.