Foshan and Economic Trends

Foshan is a prefecture-level city located In the central southern part of Guangdong Province. The city extends across an area of 3,850 km2 and has a population of 9.5 million. It’s divided into five administrative districts. There are 32 township-level divisions, including 11 subdistricts and 21 towns.

Foshan is an important nodal city in the Guangdong‑Hong Kong‑Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) serving as a major railway junction for routes connecting Guangzhou with Hong Kong and western Guangdong. It is connected with Hong Kong via the KCRC Guangdong Through Train service from Foshan railway station, an inter-city train service that was extended from Guangzhou to Foshan in the 1990s.

While the city is traditionally known as a manufacturing hub for electronic goods, its economy has become increasingly diverse due to efforts to expand the service sector and a shift toward high-tech industries and smart manufacturing.

Additionally, Foshan is in the heart of the Lingnan region, an area of Southern China that has its own classical culture. In this way, the city possesses its own distinctive heritage, reflected in its ceramics, Cantonese opera, martial arts, Canton silk, patent medicine, and folk arts.

In the year of 2021, the GDP reached 1.2 trillion yuan, up 8.3% compared to 2020, while the per capita disposable income reached 61,700 yuan, up 9.7% from 2020.

In 2021, the total import and export volume reached 616 billion RMB, an increase of 21.7% compared to the previous year.

Added value of primary industries reached 21 billion yuan, up 9.5% from 2020, while that of secondary industry and tertiary industry reached 680 billion yuan and 513 billion yuan respectively, up 9.3% and 7% from 2020.