The Chinese pudding factory caught up in Xi Jinping’s big plans for a new dream city
A decade after branching out up north, a Shenzhen food company is again weighing its options as Beijing rolls out a plan to ease population pressures on the capital
When Shenzhen-based pudding and milk tea maker Guangdong Strong Group decided to set up a factory in the small Hebei town of Dingxing a decade ago, it was a canny move: the water quality was good, land was cheap, wages were low, and the site was close to megacities like Beijing and Tianjin.
Dingxing authorities welcomed the factory with open arms, describing it as a model example of “businesses in the south relocating to the north”.
It was hailed as a realisation of late leader Deng Xiaoping’s hopes that prosperity from China’s wealthy coastal regions would gradually flow back inland to help raise incomes in the less-developed hinterland.
Fast forward to 2017 and Guangdong Strong employs more than 2,000 people in its labour-intensive business, but is struggling to cope as wages have risen.
Above all, the company faces an uncertain future caught up in President Xi Jinping’s grand economic plan to transform the nearby counties of Xiong, Rongcheng and Anxin into a centrepiece of development for the country’s congested political and industrial heartland.
Dingxing is just 90km from Beijing but in an entirely different economic landscape. While the capital’s wealth and opportunities attract young people from around the country, Dingxing’s residents must get by on about half the average income of their Beijing cousins.
