The Guangdong government has launched a Strategic Emerging Industries Investment Guidance Fund worth 100 billion yuan (US$14.71 billion), which it hopes will create a trillion-yuan industry investment cluster and support the development of advanced industrial systems in the province. 

At a launch ceremony in Guangzhou yesterday, Guangdong’s party secretary, Huang Kunming, and the provincial governor, Meng Fanli, unveiled the plaque for the guidance fund, which will have a registered capital of 50 billion yuan (US$7.35 billion) in the initial phase. 

According to local media reports, the fund is the first provincial-level government investment fund in Guangdong to adopt a perpetual corporate structure and focus on a variety of investments in both the short and long term.

The fund is aiming to attract capital from a range of sources such as national-level funds, state-owned firms, the finance and industrial sectors, as well as investment organisations. 

During yesterday’s ceremony, the first batch of more than 80 member organisations that form the fund’s investment institutional alliance was unveiled. An agreement was signed by 12 representative members:  ICBC Financial Asset Investment, China Aerospace International Holdings, EFunds, GF Securities, Shenzhen Capital Group, Guangdong Technological Financial Group, Yuexiu Group, IDG Capital, CoStone Capital, Legend Capital, Fortune Venture Capital and Huadeng High Tech. 

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“As a cooperative partner [of the fund], it is our common target and mission to effectively operate and develop this large-scale and multi-structured fund,” the vice chairman of ICBC  Liu Jun said on behalf of the investment alliance’s financial sector members.

Liu revealed that ICBC had already expressed its intention to cooperate closely with the fund in cutting-edge fields such as commercial aerospace, embodied AI and the low-altitude economy. 

Deng Yinghao, the assistant president of TCL Technology Group, said the fund would help solve the issue of long-term funding for the hard tech industry, providing a stable source of capital for Guangdong’s key technological breakthroughs. 

Agreements relating to twelve projects were signed during yesterday’s launch, which coincides with the Chinese government’s attempts to boost the tech sector through the use of state-backed funds. 

According to Global Times, the 2,178 government guidance funds that existed in China at the end of 2024 had a value of more than 12 trillion yuan (US$1.72 trillion).