A view of Nanshan district of Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province File photo: VCG

The economic output in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, reached the one-trillion-yuan ($143.7 billion) threshold in 2025, averaging an annual growth of over 5.8 percent during the past five years, a city government official said on Tuesday when delivering the annual local government work report.

Widely deemed an important hub for tech innovation and advanced manufacturing in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Nanshan has become the first prefecture-level district in China with GDP exceeding one-trillion-yuan, and its economic output has even surpassed that of some European countries, according to Xinhua News Agency.

Nanshan's gross domestic product (GDP) rose from 652.7 billion yuan at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20) to more than one-trillion-yuan in five years, averaging annual growth of over 5.8 percent, said Li Xiaoning, district mayor of Nanshan district government.

In 2025 alone, Nanshan's GDP growth was expected to exceed 6 percent — outperforming the national, provincial and municipal averages — and the district led Shenzhen in several major economic indicators, according to a People's Daily report.

Industrial output of above-scale enterprises was expected to top 900 billion yuan. Fixed-asset investment was set to reach 194.2 billion yuan; retail sales of consumer goods were expected to top 192 billion yuan, with year-on-year growth of 6.8 percent; and total foreign trade was expected to amount to 941.9 billion yuan, with exports the highest among Shenzhen's districts, the People's Daily reported.

The district's government report also highlighted the growing contribution of high-tech sectors. Value added from strategic emerging industries accounted for about 60 percent of Nanshan's GDP. 

The district is home to more than 20 robot integrator firms, over 200 upstream and downstream companies in the robotics supply chain, and more than 1,000 above-scale artificial intelligence enterprises, according to the local government report. Local authorities said the district now serves a business ecosystem of more than 600,000 operating entities.

Nanshan's experience shows how technological innovation can overcome resource constraints and power new quality productive forces, offering a window onto China's broader growth potential, said Guo Wanda, executive vice president of the Shenzhen-based China Development Institute.

For 2026, the district has set a GDP growth target of more than 5 percent. According to Li, the government will actively expand investment, continue to stimulate consumption, deepen business environment reforms and strive for both reasonable quantitative growth and effective qualitative improvement as it seeks to sustain high-quality development. 


Global Times