Tax cuts to Macau firms: new Guangdong governor

After being confirmed as the new governor of Guangdong on Tuesday, Zhu Xiaodan pledged to strengthen cooperation with Macau and Hong Kong and to offer tax cuts to firms from the two SARs.
During his first press conference as governor, Zhu disclosed that his Administration was preparing a batch of 30 policies, which include tax reductions to help over 120,000 companies from Macau and Hong Kong operating in the neighbouring province.
Quoted by South China Morning Post, the 58-year-old acknowledged that many enterprises were going through hard times as costs soar and the global economic uncertainty shrinks orders.
“Foreign trade growth in Guangdong has been slowing month by month since August, from 14.7 per cent in July to 5.4 per cent in December,” he stressed. Imports in China’s manufacturing heartland will grow by 8.5 per cent and exports by 7 per cent this year, Zhu predicted.
After the annual meeting of the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress, Zhu said the service industry would be open to Macau and Hong Kong investors, in order to boost cooperation in finance, logistics and information technology.
But the official conceded that social unrest is a bigger challenge than the economic risks. He promised to confront illegal land grabs, a hugely contentious issue in China, where authorities are accused of colluding with developers in lucrative real estate deals.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, an official government think tank, says land disputes account for 65 percent of rural China’s “mass incidents” – the one-party government’s euphemism for large protests.
And last month China’s premier Wen Jiabao said the government must guard land rights of hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers, just days after a rare revolt lead to changes to the party leadership in Guangdong’s Wukan village.
Zhu was elected by 740 votes to three. The former Guangdong vice-governor was named acting governor in November after Huang Huahua stepped down. Huang, 65, had been governor of Guangdong since 2003.