Shanghai and Shenzhen (and a major center for Taiwanese investment), outside of China, Dongguan has yet to gain the kind of name recognition realized by Shenzhen (just an hour away, and down-river from Dongguan). This may be because the city has placed an emphasis on investing in infrastructure, rather than directly targeting major corporations with financial incentives for economic development. Still, Dongguan has been identified by high level representatives of the National Development and Reform Commission of the central government as being one of the most significant growth regions for technology in the coming years. As part of this plan the Dongguan local government has announced a plan to create and support a 100 Billion RMB photovoltaic manufacturing industry by 2015.
To cope with the strike of financial crisis, Dongguan city has developed the solutions to step out of the difficulties in order to push forward the city’s industrial restructuring, transformation and upgrade. The city starts a series of study and discussion activities on applying scientific concept on development of the four-pillar platforms - governmental service, supporting measures, technology upgrade and market expansion - to give strong support for transformation of processing trade enterprises in Guangdong province. Through a series of effective measures, Dongguan industrial restructuring has achieved preliminary results. Its industrial restructuring has already enhanced the city’s capability of independent innovation and the quantity of patent applications in 2008. Such intention were further confirmed by the visit of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Dongguan back in July 2008 at some high technology enterprises where Wen gave strong encouragement and compliments on their innovative technologies, such as Dongguan Anwell Digital Machinery Co., Ltd. (a subsidiary of a Singapore listed company), Dongguan Konka Electronic Co., Ltd., and Hua Bao Shoes Co.,Ltd
