China Guangfa Bank Disburses Over 480 Billion Yuan in Loans for Guangdong's County-Town-Village Program

By Investment Time Network & Biaodian Finance Researcher Zhang Jingyu

Promoting coordinated development between urban and rural areas is an essential requirement for Guangdong's advancement of Chinese-style modernization. In December 2022, the Second Plenary Session of the 13th Guangdong Provincial Party Committee reviewed and approved a decision to implement the "High-Quality Development Project for Hundreds of Counties, Thousands of Towns, and Tens of Thousands of Villages" (the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project). The provincial party committee further clarified that this project would be the top priority for promoting coordinated urban-rural development, covering all 122 counties (cities, districts), 1,609 townships (sub-districts), and 26,500 administrative villages (communities) across the province. The year 2026 marks a critical juncture as the project transitions from "initial results in three years" to "significant changes in five years." Advancing this top-priority project for high-quality development requires the precise support and robust backing of financial resources.

Guangfa Bank is the only national joint-stock commercial bank headquartered in Guangzhou, with full coverage of institutions and business across all "9+2" cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Anchored to its strategic positioning as a "main force bank serving the Greater Bay Area," the bank leverages its unique advantages of "backed by China Life, rooted in the Bay Area." It has made serving the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project a key focus for deepening its presence in the Bay Area and county-level markets. The bank formulated a special action plan, outlining 15 key tasks across six major categories: increasing resource investment in agriculture, rural areas, and farmers; serving county and town industrial development and transformation; supporting urban and rural consumption upgrades; supporting urban and rural infrastructure construction; consolidating poverty alleviation achievements; and strengthening financial service channel construction. It has built an inclusive financial product matrix of "head office standardized products + branch-specific projects," tailoring agricultural-specific project products to precisely match the differentiated financing needs of county-level industries. As of now, Guangfa Bank has cumulatively deployed over 480 billion yuan in loans for the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project.

From a Mooncake to the Financing Rhythm of County Industries

During the golden autumn season, the Chinese Farmers' Harvest Festival coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival. In Maoming, western Guangdong, mooncake production is entering its busiest time of the year. Aligning with the "one county, one industry; one town, one specialty" industrial layout, Guangfa Bank has built a specialized product shelf targeting characteristic industrial clusters in western Guangdong, such as mooncakes, lychees, longans, and Citri Grandis Exocarpium (Huajuhong). Through mechanisms like special credit plans, green approval channels, and special assessment incentives, the bank ensures financial resources are precisely injected into all links of the industrial chain.

Maoming, known as the "Kind-hearted City" on the coast of the South China Sea, boasts a mooncake-making history of over 1,300 years and has been awarded the title "China Mooncake Famous City." Its industry scale has ranked among the top prefecture-level cities nationwide for consecutive years. The city is home to over 250 mooncake production enterprises, employing approximately 150,000 people, with an annual output value exceeding 5 billion yuan. Leveraging its "Five Trees, One Fish, One Table of Dishes" characteristic agricultural cluster, local producers process agricultural products like lychees, longans, and Huajuhong into fillings, connecting the industrial chain from field to factory and transforming the "small mooncake" into a "big industry" that enriches the people and revitalizes the village.

The peak season places significant strain on the cash flow of mooncake enterprises. Traditional one-year working capital loans may not fully cover the operating cycle from stocking up and production to sales collection. Guangfa Bank Maoming Branch proactively provided services, extending the term of single working capital loans to a maximum of three years. One beneficiary is a "Guangdong Time-Honored Brand" that started as a neighborhood bakery and now sells products nationwide and overseas. At the critical moment of centralized raw material procurement, a 6 million yuan working capital loan facility was successfully disbursed on schedule.

By extending the loan term, the financing rhythm better matches the production cycle of the "small mooncake." Last year, Guangfa Bank Maoming Branch proactively engaged with clients, approving a 10 million yuan credit facility for a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage mooncake-making leading enterprise to renovate its modern workshop, and a 6 million yuan facility for another mooncake enterprise holding both "Guangdong Time-Honored Brand" and provincial intangible cultural heritage status, focusing investment on heritage technique preservation and brand upgrading. This "financial filling" sown last year has now materialized into golden, crispy mooncakes on the Mid-Autumn market, with the sweetness of Maoming mooncakes spreading from western Guangdong to a wider world.

Looking at the cash flow cycle of a mooncake, the financing needs of characteristic industries do not always follow the standardized pattern of borrowing for one year and repaying in one year. For industries with distinct production cycles and sales seasons, financial services must also follow the industry's timeline. This applies to mooncakes, lychees, and Huajuhong alike. Guangfa Bank has developed exclusive products like "Lychee Loan," "Pineapple Loan," and "Aquilaria Loan" for "Guangdong-brand" agricultural products such as lychees and longans from western Guangdong, Xuwen pineapples, and Maoming agarwood, ensuring the pace of financial services follows the industry's seasons. A mooncake, a lychee, a piece of agarwood – these represent the most vibrant consumption pulse of the Bay Area's county economies and the most tangible industrial expression of the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project on the land of Lingnan.

From a Sea to Monetizing Credit for Characteristic Industries

Guangdong is a major maritime province, with the longest mainland coastline in the country. Building a modern marine ranch is a key path for Guangdong to practice the "big food concept" and promote high-quality development of the marine economy. The "Guangdong Province Modern Marine Ranch Development Master Plan (2024–2035)" proposes to fully establish the "Yuehai Granary" by 2035, building a strong marine fishery province with international influence. For asset-light industries like marine ranching, Guangfa Bank collaborates with policy-oriented guarantee institutions such as Guangdong Provincial Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to build a risk-sharing mechanism coordinating policy guarantees, agricultural insurance, and special loans, turning the concept that "no collateral does not mean no credit" into reality for county industries.

Raoping County in Chaozhou City is a major maritime county in Guangdong and a key county for Guangfa Bank's vertical assistance under the "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project. Marine ranch construction is a crucial lever for the county to leverage its marine resource endowments and promote rural revitalization.

For aquaculture farmers and enterprises, the operational risks of mariculture are difficult to quantify. Natural environmental risks are unpredictable, and business entities are often asset-light, lacking fixed assets for collateral, making traditional credit methods difficult to apply. Coupled with the seasonal nature of the industry cycle and capital needs, establishing standardized credit assessments is challenging. A local leading aquaculture enterprise was stuck precisely on the issue of "light assets, lack of collateral." Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch broke away from traditional logic by incorporating rights certificates such as sea area use rights, aquaculture permits, and insurance policies, along with industrial operational data, into the credit assessment system. This made previously unquantifiable "implicit credit" explicit, tailoring a 10 million yuan special credit loan for the enterprise.

Simultaneously, Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch partnered with Guangdong Provincial Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to provide policy guarantees at preferential rates, combined with special loan preferential interest rates and embedded policy-based marine cage aquaculture insurance. This created a full-chain service system of "guarantee fee reduction + interest rate concession + risk mitigation." To date, Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch has provided 29 million yuan in special loan support for the Raoping marine ranch aquaculture industry, covering the entire cycle from seedling procurement, feed storage, and environmentally friendly cage upgrades to infrastructure construction, promoting the application of "wood-to-plastic" eco-friendly cages and deep-sea gravity cages.

This exemplifies the practical application of Guangfa Bank's "backed by China Life" advantage at the county level. Leveraging the comprehensive financial strengths of the China Life Group, Guangfa Bank collaborates with China Life's insurance segment, using policy-based agricultural insurance for credit enhancement to offer integrated "insurance + credit" products. Insurance first covers natural risks, and then the bank provides funding support. This bank-insurance linkage provides robust support for county-level industrial financial services.

While aquaculture faces the challenge of insufficient collateral and difficulty obtaining financing, agricultural processing enterprises bear a different kind of pressure. A seafood company in Zhelin Town, Raoping County, processes green shrimp using high-quality sea areas in Zhelin Bay and Dacheng Bay. Its products are listed as a Guangdong "Yue-brand" agricultural product, covering hot pot catering, prepared foods, and supermarket fast-moving consumer goods channels. The maturity period for whiteleg shrimp in eastern and western Guangdong is concentrated from May to July and September to November. Once the season arrives, the company must quickly purchase shrimp in bulk and store them at low temperatures to fulfill orders for the entire year. However, the company operates on a light-asset basis with no large fixed assets for collateral, and its funding gap is "short, fast, and urgent," making traditional credit difficult to match the actual rhythm.

Based on a multi-dimensional comprehensive assessment of the enterprise's actual cash flow, operational data, and credit history, Guangfa Bank Shantou Branch ultimately approved a 5 million yuan credit line with a preferential interest rate, precisely supporting the company's peak-season needs for centralized shrimp purchasing and fresh-keeping inventory preparation.

This "credit monetization" approach is not limited to the sea. In Huizhou, the Luofu Mountain Butterfly Valley Farm is transforming into an "eco + leisure" cultural tourism complex, also constrained by light assets and lack of collateral. Guangfa Bank Huizhou Branch partnered with Guangdong Provincial Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to customize the "Leisure Agriculture Guarantee Loan," combined with Boluo County's policy of full guarantee fee exemption, opening a financing channel for the project's transformation. Currently, Guangdong is accelerating the construction of the leading area for high-quality development of counties, towns, and villages around Nankunshan and Luofu Mountain. Whether these cultural tourism complexes can successfully transform tests the financial system's adaptability to new county-level industrial forms. In Meizhou, an electrical manufacturing enterprise faced a funding gap for heavy asset investments like new factory construction and equipment procurement. Guangfa Bank Meizhou Branch conducted a detailed investigation of its operations and provided 150 million yuan in comprehensive credit support through a combination of "working capital loans + domestic letters of credit + forfaiting."

From marine ranches to cultural tourism farms, from county-level processing to manufacturing upgrades, "asset-light entities can also obtain credit support" is becoming a common practice for Guangfa Bank in serving county industries in the Bay Area. As the dimensions of financial assessment expand from single fixed assets to operational data, industry prospects, and insurance credit enhancement, enterprises in counties, towns, and villages have more opportunities to be recognized.

From a Chain to the Depth of Financial Services

Why can Guangfa Bank continuously serve these county-level characteristic industries? An important reason is that its financial services do not stop at providing a loan to an enterprise but continuously move closer to the specific operational links of the industry.

Products follow the industry. Guangfa Bank's "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project special agricultural product shelf precisely matches the funding needs across the entire cycle of planting expansion, cold chain storage, processing chain extension, and brand operation. In the marine economy sector, Guangfa Bank has also introduced the "Marine Carbon Sink Loan," using the future trading rights of carbon emission reductions from algae and shellfish aquaculture as collateral. The scale of modern marine ranch loans continues to grow, covering cities such as Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Zhanjiang, Yangjiang, Shanwei, and Chaozhou.

Services reach down to counties, towns, and villages. Guangfa Bank has established 30 county-level sub-branch outlets in eastern and western Guangdong, dispatched a total of 50 financial assistants and financial village officials, and expanded services to more towns and villages through inclusive financial characteristic sub-branches, "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers" financial mobile service teams, and agricultural service stations. For county-level enterprises, financing difficulties sometimes stem not just from a lack of funds, but also from the bank's "insufficient understanding." By accessing provincial big data tools like Yuexinfen, combined with data labs and risk models, Guangfa Bank enriches the credit information of county enterprises, assisting in risk identification and credit decision-making. Simultaneously, through mechanisms like special credit plans and green approval channels, it provides differentiated financial support for county industries.

From "financing" to "providing intellectual support." In 2022, Guangfa Bank became a designated service bank for Guangdong Province's special rural revitalization bonds. It assisted the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in drafting and launching the nation's first rural revitalization special bond reserve plan, signed issuance advisory cooperation agreements with 15 cities, conducted over 40 training sessions and project meetings, and provided on-site research and consulting for over 1,000 projects. The radius of financial services is not limited to corporate projects. Guangfa Bank Zhanjiang Branch provides targeted assistance to Beipo Village, Baisha Town, Leizhou City, donating special funds for rural greening improvements. To date, approximately 400 seedlings have been planted, and 2,400 meters of new green roads have been added, contributing a touch of green to the construction of an ecological and beautiful Guangdong through concrete actions of stationing in towns and assisting villages. In the counties, towns, and villages of the Bay Area, the tentacles of financial services are extending deeper, inch by inch, along industrial chains, road networks, and tidal patterns.

The "Hundreds, Thousands, and Tens of Thousands" Project is driving new changes in the pattern of urban and rural development in Guangdong. As the project continues to advance in depth, how finance can better play its role in resource allocation and inject sustained momentum into county economies will become a crucial lens for observing Guangdong's high-quality development. Guangfa Bank will continue to explore more possibilities for serving county industries, channeling financial resources into the counties, towns, villages, and land-sea industrial belts of the Bay Area, continuously empowering the high-quality development of Guangdong's urban and rural areas, and contributing to Guangdong's efforts to take the lead in advancing Chinese-style modernization.

Investment Time Keywords: Guangfa Bank