From Wall Street Journal:
The global financial crisis has been a wake-up call for southern China, adding urgency to official efforts to move beyond the region’s traditional reliance on low-end manufacturing, a top Chinese leader said in a rare meeting with members of the foreign media.
Wang Yang, Communist Party secretary of southern China’s Guangdong province and a member of the party’s Politburo, said Thursday that the financial crisis exposed the fragility and volatility of basing the Chinese economy on what he called “the lowest level on the value chain.”
“We need to start from a new beginning,” said Mr. Wang, who ranks as Guangdong’s most powerful official. “Since last year, we’ve been calling on people to free their minds of the old growth patterns, but there was still strong demand for our products and it was very hard for people to realize the pressing need for change.”
