▲Workers packed bags of snail powder on the production line of a food company in Liuzhou. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Xiaobang
If you associate snail powder with Wuling "net red car", what do you think?
When it comes to snail powder, many people should think of Liuzhou, Guangxi. But what many people don't know is that in addition to snail powder, Liuzhou is also the main production base of "net red car" Wuling Hongguang.
In 2021, with the help of the popularity of the micro-electric vehicle Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, the car won the sales champion for many consecutive months, and the output of new energy vehicles in Liuzhou, Guangxi reached 482,000 units, accounting for 1/7 of China's new energy vehicle market, ranking among the first echelon of the new energy automobile industry.
Liuzhou, is a large snail powder production city, 2021 Liuzhou snail powder whole industry chain sales revenue exceeded 50 billion yuan.
Liuzhou is also an important automobile production town, once every 10 cars produced in the mainland, there was one "Liuzhou production".
The low-key automotive industry
Liuzhou, a city where the streets and alleys are full of powder shops, and even the air is filled with the smell of snail powder.
At the beginning of the year, the Guangxi Liuzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce revealed a set of data on the snail powder industry. In 2021, the sales revenue of the whole industry chain of Liuzhou snail powder reached 50.16 billion yuan, of which the sales revenue of bagged Liuzhou snail powder reached 15.197 billion yuan, an increase of 38.23% year-on-year.
Compared with the snail powder that has made Liuzhou famous nationwide, the city's automobile industry is relatively low-key.
As an important industrial center in the southwest region of the mainland, Liuzhou's automobile industry started earlier. After the founding of New China, Liuzhou's automobile industry has developed by leaps and bounds.
In 1969, Liuzhou Agricultural Machinery Factory and Liuzhou Machinery Factory were approved to jointly produce automobiles, Liuzhou Machinery Factory successfully trial production of gasoline engines, while Liuzhou Agricultural Machinery Factory was responsible for the production of automobile chassis, cabs and carriages.
In the same year, Liuzhou successfully produced the first "Leap" brand car in Guangxi, that is, the "Liujiang" brand 130 truck that was later renamed.
In the 1980s, relying on technicians hammering hammer after hammer, Liuzhou successfully built the first mini car. The first 220 new cars were put on the market and sold out quickly.
After years of accumulation, Liuzhou's automobile industry ushered in rapid development at the beginning of this century.
In 2000, Liuzhou produced only 110,000 cars a year, and by 2015, this production reached 2.3 million. In more than a decade, the annual output of Liuzhou Automobile has increased by more than 20 times.
At the end of 2015, the permanent population of Liuzhou was only 1.596 million, so it is no wonder that some people say that Liuzhou is the "city that produces the most cars per capita" on the mainland.
In 2010, the output value of Liuzhou automobile industry exceeded 100 billion yuan, becoming the first industry in the city to break through 100 billion yuan.
Liuzhou's automobile industry developed rapidly during the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, with an annual output of more than 2.5 million vehicles in 2015, and Liuzhou people said that "for every ten cars produced in China, one of them is produced in Liuzhou."
▲ In an automobile company in Liuzhou, workers are busy on the production line of new energy vehicles. Photo: Xinhua News Agency
During the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, the total automobile production of Liuzhou reached 9.3 million units, which is 2.1 times that of the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" period.
During this period, the automobile industry became an important force driving the rapid growth of Liuzhou industry.
In 2002, SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., Ltd. was established in Liuzhou, which is the place where the production is known as the "net red car" Wuling Hongguang.
Driven by various "play terriers" on the Internet, Wuling Hongguang has rapidly become popular on social platforms with its smooth shape design, diversified and practical spacious driving space.
According to the 2021 production and sales data released by SAIC-GM-Wuling, in 2021, SAIC-GM-Wuling produced a total of 1.671 million vehicles, an increase of 8% year-on-year.
Among them, Wuling Hongguang has won the sales champion of the domestic MPV model segment for many years.
The first echelon of new energy vehicles
As the largest industrial base in Guangxi, in addition to owning SAIC-GM-Wuling, Liuzhou is also one of the few cities in the country that owns four major automobile group vehicle manufacturers such as FAW, Dongfeng, SAIC motor and SINOTRUK.
At present, Tesla's new energy vehicle market advantage is obvious, and what can compete with it in terms of sales is not the rising new car-making force, but a micro-electric vehicle With a price of 28,800 Yuan, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV.
According to the data of the China Passenger Car Market Information Association, as of November 2021, Hongguang MINI EV has won the sales volume of China's new energy vehicle market for 15 consecutive months with sales of 45,576 units.
At the second session of the 15th People's Congress of Liuzhou, Zhang Zhuang, mayor of Liuzhou, said in his government work report that in 2021, Liuzhou's automobile production and sales increased by 8.2% and 4.7% respectively, exceeding the average growth rate of China's automotive industry.
Among them, the output of new energy vehicles reached 482,000 units, an increase of 157.6%, accounting for 1/7 of the national output.
In 2021, Shanghai ranked first in the country with 630,000 new energy vehicles. In that year, the national output of new energy vehicles was 3.54 million, and Shanghai accounted for about 1/6.
After Shanghai, Guangdong produced 535,000 new energy vehicles, an increase of 155.6% year-on-year, accounting for about 15% of the country.
With an annual output of 482,000 new energy vehicles, Liuzhou successfully ranked among the first echelon of the new energy automobile industry last year.
Some media pointed out that Liuzhou is the city with the highest penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China, and among the new cars in the insurance, new energy vehicles account for up to 30%, of which most are micro-electric vehicles.
In fact, the rapid development of Liuzhou's new energy automobile industry is not unrelated to the active promotion of the local area.
As early as 2016, Liuzhou issued the "Several Opinions on Promoting the Development of the New Energy Automobile Industry in Liuzhou", proposing to comprehensively promote the development of the new energy automobile industry from the whole industry chain link of battery, motor, electronic control, vehicle, sales, charging, and after-sales service.
In 2021, 4,300 new energy vehicle charging facilities will be built in Liuzhou. The new energy automobile base of Guangxi Automobile Group has achieved vehicle off-line, and the power battery and high-end chips of automobiles have also achieved new breakthroughs.
Why Liuzhou
Liuzhou, also known as Hucheng and Longcheng, is a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and a sub-central city in Guangxi.
In 2021, the preliminary calculation of Liuzhou's regional GDP is 340.09 billion yuan, and from the perspective of economic volume, this level of Liuzhou is close to that of Zhuzhou City in Hunan Province (342.026 billion yuan), ranking among the top 100 in the country and can rank around 90.
Liuzhou is also the only city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region except Nanning with a GDP of more than 300 billion yuan, although the GDP gap with the first-ranked Nanning is more than 100 billion yuan, but it exceeds the GDP of the third-place Guilin by more than 100 billion yuan.
In the newly announced urban planning system, Guangxi not only explicitly mentioned the high standard construction of the Nanning Metropolitan Circle, but also proposed to build Liuzhou into a sub-center of Guangxi.
At the 13th Party Congress of Liuzhou City in 2021, "accelerating the construction of a modern manufacturing city and building a trillion-dollar industrial strong city" was highlighted.
In order to achieve this goal, Liuzhou has also put forward a detailed plan, which will take the implementation of high-quality industrial development and the construction of a modern manufacturing city as a breakthrough to achieve a total industrial output value of 800 billion yuan by 2023, laying a solid foundation for building a trillion yuan industrial strong city in 2025.
In the automotive industry, Liuzhou regards new energy vehicles as the direction of key development, and clearly proposes to promote new energy and intelligent networked vehicles, expand the proportion of high-end models, and increase the proportion of new energy vehicles.
Of course, in addition to automobiles, the snail powder industry, which is one of Liuzhou's city business cards, cannot be ignored.
In just a few years, the bagged snail powder industry has achieved rapid growth. In 2020, the annual sales revenue of snail powder is 10.994 billion yuan, and in 2021, this figure will reach 15.197 billion yuan, and the whole industry chain will exceed 50 billion yuan.
Behind the growth of the snail powder industry, it is inseparable from Liuzhou's industrial thinking to create the Liuzhou snail powder industry. Last year, Liuzhou specially issued the "Implementation Plan on Promoting the Construction of the Whole Industrial Chain Standard System of Liuzhou Snail Powder", which is also regarded as an important program for promoting the high standard and high-quality development of the Liuzhou snail powder industry.
According to Liuzhou's vision, in the future, snail powder will be made into Liuzhou's "edible city business card".
Liuzhou, a city where even the air is filled with the smell of snail powder, in addition to the snail powder shops on the street, a variety of new energy vehicles are becoming a scenery of the city.
Text | Zha Zhiyuan, a researcher at Xinjing Think Tank
Edit | Zhang Xiaoyuan
Proofreading | Wang Xin