Shaoguan is an excellent tourist city in China, a national advanced clean city and a civilized city in Guangdong as well. It is situated in the north of Guangdong and has an urban history for more than 2100 years to this day and thus is a famous historical and cultural city in Guangdong. Shaoguan is developed in industry, trade and tourism with prosperous economy and is an political, economic and cultural center and also a hub of communications in North Guangdong.

Since the inception of reform and opening up to the outside world, backed by unique natural conditions and solid economic base, Shaoguan has implemented strategies of "powering the economy through export-oriented economy, revitalizing Shaoguan through science and education, strengthening Shaoguan through industry and sustainable development" to steadily carry forward the reforms and advance the national economy development. In the early 1990s, Shaoguan was listed among 50 powerful cities with comprehensive economic strength in China. Since the Ninth Five-year Plan period, the GDP of Shaoguan city has been higher than the national average level for 6 years in succession. All-round advances have been made in the social undertakings such as science, education, culture, health and sports. The public order is fairly good and the people are living and working in peace and contentment.

Today, the economic infrastructure facilities in Shaoguan are being improved with preferential policy and high quality and high efficiency service for investment. Shaoguan has very ideal conditions and broad development space for investment and settlement. It is becoming both the hot spot for investment and ideal land for starting an undertaking and developing in South China. Investment and development are sincerely welcomed by Shaoguan municipal Party committee, Shaoguan municipal government and Shaoguan people. We will provide the good conditions for you to give full play to your talents and invest as wellas create a favorable environment for starting an undertaking and developing. Let's jointly work for development and create new splendor in the land.

A Survey of Shaoguan
Geographical Position

Position:
Shaoguan is located in the north of Guangdong, lying between east longitude 112°50' - 114°45' and north latitude 23°5' - 25°31' meeting on Chenzhou City of Hunan and Ganzhou City of Jiangxi to its northwest, north and northeast, adjoining Heyuan City to its east, bordering on Qingyuan City to its west and neighboring Guangzhou City and Huizhou City to its south. It is only a two-hour drive from the city proper to Guangzhou.

Area and Population:
Shaoguan has an area of 18,400 square kilometers, a population of 3,148,500 at the end of 2003 and downtown area 2856 square kilometers and downtown population 893,700.

Administrative Divisions:
Two cities, three districts and six counties are under Shaoguan's jurisdiction including Lechang City, Nanxiong City, Wujiang District, Zhenjiang District, Qujiang District, Renhua County, Shixing County, Wengyuan County, Xinfeng County, the Ruyuan Yao Autonomous County.

Historical Culture
Evolution of History:
Shaoguan is one of the earliest birthplace of Lingnan's ancient culture, the native place of Maba People and the rising place of Shaxia's culture with a long history and ancient culture of long standing and well established. As early as 100 thousand years ago, the ancestors of North Guangdong labored and lived here. 111 B.C, Qujiang County was set up including most of areas of Shaoguan City and the present downtown of county seat. Shaoguan was called Shaozhou in Sui Dynasty and set up the customhouse in Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty and thus began to be called the present name.

Dialect of Folk Custom:
The dialect in Shaoguan is mainly Hakka, widely spoken in vast urban district and the countryside and thus is the tool for language communication between Yao and local Han. Cantonese is widely spoken in the city proper of Shaoguan, the city proper of Lechang and Renhua County while Mandarin Chinese is spoken in the city proper, county, town, factories and mining area. The folk culture and art are rich in a great variety including tea-picking opera, flower-drum opera, flower-lamp opera, folk-song opera, folk song, storytelling, clapper talk, Cantonese opera, drag-dance performance and lion-dance performance and wood carving, weaving, embroidery and paper-cut.

Religious Culture:
The religion of Shaoguan has a long history and the religious culture of long standing and well established which includes Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Catholicism but the Buddhists and Taoists are more. Some religious temple fair such as the Birth of Nanhua has produced a great impact up to now. The diet and clothing of the followers have some religious colors.

Resources
Climate:
Shaoguan is in the middle subtropical monsoon area of humid type, has mainly the pleasantly cool and warm climate with distinct four seasons and delightful weather. The annual rainfall is 1910 mm and the average annual temperature is 20.7°C.Sunshine coordinates well with temperature and rainfall. The rainy season and hot season are basically of the same time, favorable to plant growth and agricultural production. There are about 310 days in annual frost-free period. It snows in the mountain area of the north in winter.

Rivers:
The rivers within the boundaries of Shaoguan are of Beijiang River Valley of Pearl River system. The amount to be developed for water resources accounts for 19% of the total in the whole province. Beijiang River runs through the city from the north to the south with many big and small tributaries. The upper reaches of Beijiang River is Zhenjiang, with the overall length of 144 kilometers. The primary tributaries are Mojiang River and Jinjiang River while those of Beijiang Rivers include Wujiang River, Nanshui River and Wengjiang River. Part of Xinfeng County is of Dongjiang River Valley. Due to plentiful rainfall and rivers with great drop, it is rich in water amount and water resources.

Agriculture:
Shaoguan is vast in territory with unique agricultural conditions. The unique ecological system is formed by unique climate, plentiful rain, sunshine, rivers, ponds and reservoirs and rolling hills immense forests, especially for planting "green" vegetables, out-of-season vegetables, alpine flowers and plants and pot landscape. The main agricultural products are rice, vegetables, sugarcane, peanuts, tobacco leaves, fruits, tea, flowers, plants and silkworm cocoons. It is the agricultural economic zone with distinctive features and has boundless prospects on developing the intensive processing of agricultural products and thus is an ideal land for numerous investors to investing agriculture.

Mineral Products:
Shaoguan is rich in mineral resources and has a reputation of "the home of nonferrous metal in China". The city has proven 49 mineral products and 218 mineral deposits, including coal, lead, zinc, copper, iron, tungsten, stibium, cement rock and granite, etc, among which, the reserves of 22 minerals such as copper, lead, zinc, stibium, bismuth, mercury, sodium, rare-earth and coal rank the first in the province.

Forestry:
Shaoguan has rich forest resources and is the key forest zone in China, the bases of timber forest, water source forest, natural forest and mao bamboo in Guandong and the ecological barrier of Pearl River Delta as well. At the end of 2003, the city has a forest area of 1,270,000 hectares and an amount of growing forest of 64,650,000 cube meters. The forest coverage rate amounts to 71%. Shaguan is complete and rich in species with 3400 kinds of animals and plants and has a reputation of bio-gene pool in South China. The main forest products include timber, mao bamboo, rosin, ginkgo, bark of encomia, Xianggu mushroom, edible black fungus, bamboo, Chinese chestnut, tung tree seeds and oil-tea camellia seeds.

Tourism:
Shaoguan has beautiful landscape and many scenic spots and is reputed as collection of grand sight in South China. The tourism of ecology and Buddhism culture has distinctive features. The natural and human views add radiance and beauty to each other. The integrated structure of tourist resources is second to none in Guangdong. It has 11 scenic spots, conservation areas, forest parks, key temples and cultural relics at national level and 19 scenic spots, temples and cultural relics at provincial level. Among which, Nanhua Temple is the national key temple and the birthplace of the Buddhist Zen, the 6th Great Master Huineng expanding the South Zen faction and thus has the reputation of South Zen ancestral court. Danxia Mountain, ranking the first in four great mountains in Guangdong, is the world geological park, the scenic spot at national 4A level and is called " China's Red Rock Park", "National Geological Park" and "The Fist Wonderful Mountain of Lingnan".

Economic Development
Brief to the Economy:
Since the inception of reform and opening up to the outside world, considerable progress has been made in social economy of Shaoguan which was listed among 50 powerful cities with comprehensive economic strength in China in the early 1990s. Its economic development is above the average among the comparable cities in China. The GDP of Shaoguan in 2003 grew by 12.9% to RMB 26.81 billion. The ratio of industrial structure for three times was 19.3:46.7:34.0. In recent years, Shaoguan has kept the momentum in the service industry such as transportation, posts and telecommunications, catering, information, real estate and intermediary agency. The economic development has been accelerated and the growth rate is higher than the national level. The Number of tourists visiting Shaguan has been greatly increasing for years in succession. The number of tourists received in 2003 totaled 4,664,000 people/times.

Inviting Outside Investments:
The utilized foreign capital is steadily growing. In 2003, USD 305 million of foreign capital and RMB 10.7 billion of domestic capital outside Shaoguan have been actually paid in Shaoguan. Large quantities of large foreign invested enterprises have settled in Shaoguan and are rapidly growing. In 2003, The big project at invested value of RMB 50 million in Shaoguan reached 93 and that of RMB 100 million did 38.

Development Strategy:
Acquiring and implementing a scientific development outlook, grasping the opportunities of important strategy, deepening reform and expanding opening up to the outside world, targeting "increasing total demand and total supply, enhancing economic quality, quickening economic development and improving living standard of people", great efforts are taken to advance "three key strategies" of inviting outside investments, urban construction and non-state economy to meticulously make the adjustment of economic structure, transform the mode of economic growth, raise the quality of economic growth, increase the sustaining power of development and unswervingly persist in strengthening Shaoguan through industry, stabilizing Shaoguan through agriculture and boosting Shaoguan through tertiary industry so as to accelerate the process of industrialization, urbanization and industrial management of agriculture and build Shanguan into the city of strong economy in the north of Guangdong, trying to become the leading city for development in mountain areas of Guangdong province.