Counties across city stepping up development of distinctive sectors

Two women promote Lianjiang red oranges via livestreaming at a fair. YANG CHUAN/FOR CHINA DAILY

With this year's Mid-Autumn Festival approaching, mooncake makers in Wuchuan, a county-level city in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, are firing on all cylinders to meet the surging market demand.

Wuchuan is now home to more than 200 mooncake-making companies, with a total of nearly 10,000 employees, and their combined annual output value surpassed 2 billion yuan ($299 million).

Mooncakes have become a name card of Wuchuan, bringing this small coastal city renown both at home and abroad, local officials said.

The mooncake sector is a key component of the city's broader food processing industry, which, together with down products and plastic footwear, forms its three pillar industries.

Besides Wuchuan, all other counties and county-level cities in Zhanjiang are ramping up efforts to develop their distinctive industries and drive economic growth.

Official data showed that the five county-level regions achieved GDP of 203.97 billion yuan in 2025, accounting for 51.6 percent of the city's total.

Among them, Leizhou city, backed by the Zhanjiang Port-based Economic Zone, is moving forward with four major industries: electronic information, new materials, light industry and textiles, and the import and export-oriented processing of agricultural products. A total of 11 projects, with the combined investment of 2.5 billion yuan, have been completed and put into production.

Leizhou also produces one-tenth of the country's golden pompano fish every year. The Liusha Bay No 1 has been added into the ninth batch of national-level marine ranch demonstration zones.

Focusing on the wind power industry, Xuwen county ranks first in Zhanjiang in terms of offshore wind power installed capacity.

With 1.5 million kilowatts of offshore wind power projects put into operation, it has been listed among China's top 100 counties and county-level cities for green development of the year for two consecutive years.

The county is also home to three national and provincial-level modern agricultural parks as well as China's largest pineapple production base.

Built around a pineapple plantation covering more than 23,000 hectares, "the sea of pineapples" is now a national 3A-level scenic spot favored by tourists from around the country.

As one of China's main production bases of small household appliances, Lianjiang city contributes about 30 percent of China's total rice cookers, and its small household appliance sector's annual output stands at over 25 billion yuan.

In recent years, the city has been advancing the industry's transition by upgrading production equipment, innovating product design and exploring overseas markets.

During the Lianjiang Home Appliances Autumn (Guangzhou) Expo 2025 held in October, 50 home appliance enterprises from Lianjiang showcased a variety of new products, securing preliminary orders worth approximately 165 million yuan.

Lianjiang is also famous for its fresh, juicy red oranges and lychees. It yields about 100,000 metric tons of red oranges every year, with the whole industry chain output value topping 2.5 billion yuan.

Its lychee exports make up about 30 percent of the national total, earning recognition in countries such as Canada, Russia and Australia.

Suixi county has established an extensive sweet potato industry chain, ranging from seedling cultivation, standard planting and deep processing to e-commerce sales. The output value of the whole industry chain reached 10 billion yuan, according to local authorities.