Ask AI · How should Guangzhou’s dual-airport setup be optimized for division of labor to help the economy take off?

Our reporter: Liu Xuqiang Liu Songhui Our editor: Yang Huan

Image source: Xue Tu Wang_701071845

Here comes another “dual-airport” city.

On March 25, the new Guangzhou airport project officially started construction in Foshan Gaoming. This modern international aviation hub, with a total investment of more than RMB 40 billion and expected to accommodate 30 million passengers annually, stands side by side with Baiyun International Airport—positioned one to the west and one to the north. With this, Guangzhou becomes the fourth “dual-airport” city after Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu.

Dual airports are becoming a standard feature for the world’s top-tier cities. No world-class bay area relies on anything other than an airport cluster that operates in a coordinated and efficient manner—supporting the “central nervous system” for global resource allocation. According to local media, Guangzhou’s move to join the dual-airport club is a crucial strategic placement for maintaining its footing in global city competition.

In recent years, Guangzhou has faced considerable competitive pressure. In 2025, Guangzhou ranked fifth in city GDP, with the gap widening continuously with Chongqing in the previous position, while the difference with Suzhou in the next position was only a little over RMB 400 billion.

Hu Gang, founding chairman of the Guangzhou South China City Research Association and a professor at Jinan University, previously said, “At present, Guangzhou’s economic growth is relatively slow, while Suzhou’s growth rate is striking. If current trends continue, Suzhou may surpass Guangzhou around 2030.” Cheng Changchun, dean and chief expert of the Jiangsu Yangtze River Economic Belt Research Institute of Nantong University, also expressed the same view to City Evolution.

Under pressure to hold its position and to make progress, Guangzhou opened a “good start.” The first set of results for the 15th Five-Year Plan period’s opening year shows that in January–February: the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 5.6% year on year across the city; the output of new energy vehicles grew by 35.5%; investment in the three major areas improved in sync—real estate development investment and industrial investment growth both turned positive……

Looking through the economic performance report, where exactly has Guangzhou’s industrial transformation reached? In the dual-airport model that has been placed high hopes, how will optimizing division of labor inject momentum into Guangzhou, helping the city leap to a higher level?

“A rookie’s” challenges

The economic data for Guangzhou in the first two months has one major highlight: “strengthening weak spots.”

For the automobile manufacturing industry, which accounts for one quarter of total industrial output value, added value rose by 0.4% year on year. Although the change is small, it is the first time since 2024 that it has returned to positive growth. New energy vehicle output increased by 35.5%. The debut of “Qijing” jointly built by GAC and Huawei; and for the first time, XPeng Motors achieved quarterly profitability. These signals indicate that the pain point of Guangzhou’s “switch from oil to electricity” in its automobile industry is starting to ease.

Another key indicator is real estate investment. In January–February, Guangzhou’s real estate development investment grew by 0.2% year on year, and its cumulative growth rate returned to positive again for the first time since October 2025. Poly Developments opened its Yuexi Bay high-end project in Tianhe District for the first time, setting a record of RMB 10.6 billion in single-day sales. The Ma Chang plots were sold after 243 rounds of bidding for RMB 23.6 billion. SKP South China’s first store contract has been finalized as well. A series of signals show that property developers continue to bet real money on core assets in core cities.

Image source: Xue Tu Wang501635528

Moreover, the data also shows that in January–February, Guangzhou’s total retail sales of consumer goods grew by 10.7% year on year, ranking among the top in major domestic cities. Passenger throughput at Baiyun Airport increased by 11.3% year on year, remaining number one nationwide for two consecutive months.

But objectively speaking, the underlying tone of this set of data is “repair” rather than “surge.” In the first quarter of 2025, Guangzhou’s GDP growth rate was only 3.0%, the low point for the whole year. The rapid growth in the first two months this year is partly built on a low base.

Looking across the country, while Guangzhou works to escape the shadow of slowing down, Suzhou in the Yangtze River Delta is proving its “striving to be number one” strength through more balanced industrial growth. With the same economic indicators, in January–February, Suzhou’s added value of industrial enterprises above designated size grew by 10.2% year on year, with a growth rate nearly double that of Guangzhou.

Something even more worth Guangzhou’s vigilance is the quality of Suzhou’s emerging industries: in 2025, the output growth rates of integrated circuit wafers and industrial robots both exceeded 10%, and the output of the latter grew by more than 20% year on year. As Suzhou’s main base for developing the artificial intelligence industry, the Suzhou Industrial Park’s output value of AI and digital industries exceeded RMB 100 billion in 2025, reaching RMB 120 billion.

Cheng Changchun, dean and chief expert of the Jiangsu Yangtze River Economic Belt Research Institute of Nantong University, told City Evolution that based on a linear projection using Suzhou’s 2025 growth-rate gap (1.4 percentage points), Suzhou’s total GDP is expected to surpass Guangzhou around the early 2030s.

This judgment rests mainly on three structural supports. First, Suzhou’s industrial base is resilient, and the “stabilizing weight” role of industry is stronger than Guangzhou’s. In 2025, Suzhou’s added value of the secondary sector reached RMB 1,284.44 billion, accounting for 46.4% of GDP; in the same period, Guangzhou’s added value of the secondary sector was only RMB 771.027 billion, accounting for 24.1% of GDP—an industrial scale gap of more than RMB 500 billion.

Second, emerging drivers are growing faster. Suzhou is also targeting trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters in hard-tech fields such as biopharmaceuticals, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Leveraging the linkage of Shanghai’s R&D resources along the G60 sci-tech corridor, in 2025, the proportion of industrial enterprises above designated size that have established R&D institutions exceeded 90%.

In addition, as a core city in the Yangtze River Delta, Suzhou receives spillover of high-end industries and factor resources, while also administering county-level economic units at the forefront among China’s top 100 counties—such as Kunshan, Zhangjiagang, and Changshu—forming a growth pattern supported by multiple points across the “main city + counties.”

A “RMB 600 billion trillion” base

Where is Guangzhou’s opportunity?

As Cheng Changchun said, Guangzhou, as a national central city and a core engine of the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, still has clear advantages in public services and resource allocation such as education, healthcare, transportation hubs, and international exchanges. Its added value of the tertiary industry is 1.64 times that of Suzhou. If Guangzhou’s manufacturing sector can recover rapidly, the competitive picture in GDP between the two cities will still remain uncertain.

As urgent as it is for Guangzhou—this year it has already put in place a new round of plans right at the start of the year. In the “Guangzhou Plan to Accelerate the Building of a Strong Advanced Manufacturing City (2024–2035)” released in January, it boldly proposed “doubling industrial added value by 2035,” and pushing for “doubling the total economic volume by 2035.” Compared with GDP of RMB 3.04 trillion in 2023, this implies Guangzhou’s economic scale could surpass RMB 6 trillion by 2035.

In the above plan, Guangzhou analyzes itself: Shenzhen’s total industrial output value has ranked first among large and medium-sized cities in China for four consecutive years, and “even just the output value of one new generation electronics information manufacturing industry is comparable to Guangzhou’s total industrial output value.” Suzhou, meanwhile, is the second city to sprint for RMB 5 trillion in industrial output value after Shenzhen.

Image source: Xue Tu Wang501553625

Gao Hongbo, vice chairman of the South China City Research Association and a researcher at the Shenzhen Institute of the University of International Business and Economics, said recently that although Suzhou does not have the administrative status of first-tier cities, it has built the world’s most complete manufacturing ecosystem through deep cultivation of industrial chains. From electronic information to equipment manufacturing and then to new materials, it has formed an industrial coordination network of “no need for upstream and downstream links to leave the region.”

A set of data can serve as support: the number of Suzhou’s national-level technology business incubators, national science-and-technology-based SMEs, as well as global lighthouse factories and national 5G factories—all are ranked first in the country. In terms of capital attractiveness, last year Suzhou added 12 A-share listed companies, ranking first in the country—four times that of Guangzhou.

Just a little over ten days ago, Suzhou was selected—within Jiangsu Province’s only city—as part of the first batch of cities included in the MIIT’s list for creating national new-type industrialization demonstration zones. In Guangdong Province, the selected city was Shenzhen. In Gao Hongbo’s view, Guangzhou’s geographical and political endowment gives it natural advantages that Suzhou cannot easily access. But Suzhou’s manufacturing industrial-chain advantage is something Guangzhou can gradually accumulate and introduce; Guangzhou needs to take a more proactive approach to securing a Suzhou-style industrial-chain foundation.

Concretely, Guangzhou needs not only to bring in major projects, but also to cultivate and support a large number of small and medium-sized supporting enterprises and science-and-technology early-stage companies, forming a pattern of “big enterprises standing tall and small enterprises covering the land.” Based on competitive advantages in tracks such as intelligent connected new energy vehicles, biopharmaceuticals, and low-altitude economy, Guangzhou should strengthen missing links along the industrial chain blueprint.

Cheng Changchun also said that currently Guangzhou’s growth rate for industrial enterprises above designated size is lower than Suzhou’s. The core gap lies in the low share of manufacturing, insufficient scale of emerging industries, and the need to release industrial synergy effects. In the future, Guangzhou can focus on breaking through areas such as high-end upgrading of advantageous pillar industries and clustered development of strategic emerging industries.

According to the latest released economic data, in January–February this year, Guangzhou’s growth rate for industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 4.4 percentage points compared with the whole year of last year. Added value of industrial enterprises above designated size grew by 5.6% year on year across the city, and the three major pillar industries improved across the board. At the same time, Guangzhou’s added value of high-tech manufacturing grew by 12.3% year on year. The new generation of information technology industries is gaining strength. The added value of integrated circuit and optoelectronic device manufacturing grew by 1.2 times and 15.7% respectively.

Riding the trend to “take off”

As a thousand-year merchant hub, consumption has always been Guangzhou’s comparative advantage.

In January–February this year, the city’s total retail sales of consumer goods refreshed a historical record for the same period, improving by 5.2 percentage points compared with last year’s full-year performance. By contrast, Suzhou’s consumption performance in the same period was weak, with growth of only 1.4%, which was a further decline of 0.6 percentage points compared with last year’s full year.

One viewpoint holds that the development temperature gap shown between Guangzhou and Suzhou, in essence, is a dialogue between two different urban development models. If Suzhou’s trump card is “manufacturing,” Guangzhou’s underlying color is “hubs” and “radiation.” One intuitive manifestation is that a special report on the economy in South China for 2026 released by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China shows that Guangzhou has ranked first in China in the surveys for nine consecutive years as a preferred investment destination.

In October last year, after 5 years of expansion, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport opened to the public. The operation of the T3 Terminal and the fifth runway means that Baiyun International Airport has become the first airport in China’s civil aviation to have five commercial runways. It can meet the demand for annual passenger throughput of 120 million and cargo mail throughput of 3.8 million tons, and has also earned the title “the world’s largest single-unit airport.”

At that time, Guangdong Party Secretary Huang Kunming also said that it is necessary to seize opportunities and pool efforts to make the air-cargo-related economy bigger and stronger. By focusing on expanding the airport’s multiple functions, carefully build supporting facilities and scenarios for shopping consumption and cultural experiences, and strongly attract and concentrate airport industries such as air logistics, aircraft maintenance, high-end manufacturing, and cross-border e-commerce—injecting new momentum into the high-quality development of the regional economy.

And now, Guangzhou’s new airport has officially started construction in Foshan Gaoming. According to the publicly released project plan, the new airport is positioned as a comprehensive transportation hub in the western part of the Greater Bay Area. Along with Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou and Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, it is included among Guangdong’s three major international aviation hubs. From the perspective of differentiated development layout, Baiyun International Airport mainly focuses on international long-haul routes and high-end business travel, while the new Guangzhou airport will take on domestic trunk routes and short-haul routes across Asia and the Pacific.

Design of the new Guangzhou airport Image source: Guangzhou Daily

On the day construction started for the new Guangzhou airport, Huang Kunming, during his on-site investigation in Foshan, said that at present Foshan is in a critical period of structural adjustment, shift in driving momentum, and tackling headwinds and climbing over obstacles. It should take the construction of the new Guangzhou airport as an opportunity to plan for the future development of the air-cargo economy in advance, better gather high-quality factor resources, and enhance the region’s economic competitiveness, radiation, and driving force.

In fact, since the site selection was confirmed, there have been ongoing debates about why Guangzhou’s new airport is being built in Foshan and where the benefits will be. The local interpretation in Guangzhou is that naming the airport is not a simple reflection of administrative divisions, but an embodiment of its service radius and strategic positioning. Naming it “Guangzhou” is precisely to highlight the airport’s strategic positioning as an important component of Guangzhou’s international aviation hub.

In March this year, at the Guangzhou–Foshan full-region integration party-government joint meeting, the principal responsible official of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee proposed that it is hoped to enhance the levels of air, sea, and land ports, jointly strengthening the ability to allocate global resources and factors. As an important platform and carrier for upgrading the level of air and port connectivity, the launch of construction of the new Guangzhou airport is of great significance for promoting full-region Guangzhou–Foshan integration and helping build the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area.

From the perspective of industrial interaction, Guangzhou is a national central city and a core engine of the Greater Bay Area. By advancing both industry and business through joint efforts, it promotes deep integration between manufacturing and services. Foshan is a large manufacturing city with strong industrial strength. The new Guangzhou airport will drive Foshan and Guangzhou to achieve deep integration of “air-hub linkage and resource interconnection.” Guangzhou’s advantages in finance, sci-tech innovation, and commerce can be landed through Foshan’s broad industrial space and solid manufacturing foundation. Foshan’s airport-linked industries and advanced manufacturing can, in turn, reach the global market by relying on Guangzhou’s core resources.

As Cheng Changchun said, in terms of regional radiation, the dual-airport layout will greatly enhance Guangzhou’s resource allocation capacity. Baiyun Airport will strengthen the ability to concentrate high-end factors oriented toward the world. The new airport will help the western Guangdong region integrate into the Greater Bay Area’s industrial division of labor, forming a development pattern of “dual-core drive with linkage between east and west,” further consolidating Guangzhou’s position as a national central city and core engine of the Greater Bay Area.

Daily Economic News