Guangfa Bank's loans for Guangdong's 'Bai Qian Wan Project' exceed 480 billion yuan

Driving Coordinated Urban-Rural Development

Promoting coordinated development between urban and rural areas is an essential requirement for Guangdong's pursuit 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 "Hundreds, Thousands, Tens of Thousands" High-Quality Development Project (the "Project"). The provincial party committee subsequently designated the Project as the top priority for advancing 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 for the Project as it transitions from "initial results in three years" to "significant changes in five years." Advancing this top-priority high-quality development initiative requires precise and robust financial support.

Guangfa Bank: A Key Financial Backbone

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 by its strategic positioning as a "main bank serving the Greater Bay Area," the bank leverages its unique advantages of being "backed by China Life and rooted in the Bay Area." It has made serving the Project a key priority for deepening its presence in the Bay Area and expanding into county-level markets.

The bank has formulated a special action plan outlining 15 key tasks across six categories:

• Increasing resource investment in agriculture, rural areas, and farmers
• Supporting county-level industrial development and transformation
• Promoting urban and rural consumption upgrades
• Serving urban and rural infrastructure construction
• Consolidating poverty alleviation achievements
• Strengthening financial service channel development

Guangfa Bank has built a "standardized head office products + branch-specific customized plans" inclusive financial product matrix, developing tailored agricultural loan products to precisely match the differentiated financing needs of county-level industries. To date, the bank has cumulatively disbursed over 480 billion yuan in loans for the Project.

Financing Rhythms of County-Level Industries: The Mooncake Story

During the golden autumn season, as China's Farmers' Harvest Festival coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncake production in Maoming, western Guangdong, enters its busiest period. Targeting the "one county, one industry; one town, one specialty" industrial layout, Guangfa Bank has built a specialized product shelf for characteristic industrial clusters including mooncakes, lychees, longans, and Citri Grandis Exocarpium in western Guangdong. Through mechanisms such as dedicated credit plans, green approval channels, and special assessment incentives, the bank channels financial resources precisely into all segments of the industrial chain.

Maoming, known as the "Kindhearted City" on the South China Sea coast, boasts over 1,300 years of mooncake-making history and holds 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 such as lychees, longans, and Citri Grandis Exocarpium into fillings, creating an industrial chain from field to factory and transforming "small mooncakes" into a "big industry" that enriches local communities.

Paradoxically, the peak season places greater pressure on mooncake enterprises' capital turnover. Traditional one-year working capital loans may not fully cover the operating cycle from stocking and production to sales collection. Guangfa Bank's Maoming branch proactively extended the term of single working capital loans to up to 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 bulk raw material procurement, a 6 million yuan working capital credit facility was disbursed as scheduled.

The extended loan term better aligns financing rhythms with the "small mooncake" production cycle. Last year, Guangfa Bank's Maoming branch proactively provided 10 million yuan in credit for the modernization of a provincial-level intangible cultural heritage mooncake-making enterprise's factory, and 6 million yuan for another enterprise recognized as both a "Guangdong Time-Honored Brand" and provincial intangible cultural heritage holder, with funds directed toward heritage preservation and brand upgrading. The "financial filling" planted last year has now materialized into golden, fragrant mooncakes on Mid-Autumn Festival market shelves, with Maoming mooncakes spreading from western Guangdong to broader horizons.

The lesson from mooncake financing is clear: industries with distinct production and sales seasons require financial services that follow their timelines. The same applies to lychees, longans, and Citri Grandis Exocarpium. Guangfa Bank has developed customized products such as "Lychee Loan," "Pineapple Loan," and "Aquilaria Loan" for "Guangdong-brand" agricultural products, ensuring financial service rhythms align with seasonal industry cycles.

Monetizing Credit in Specialty Industries: The Ocean Story

As a major maritime province with the longest mainland coastline in China, Guangdong is building modern marine ranches as a key pathway to implementing the "big food concept" and promoting high-quality marine economy development. The Guangdong Province Modern Marine Ranch Development Master Plan (2024–2035) aims to establish the "Yuehai Granary" by 2035, creating a globally influential marine fisheries powerhouse.

For asset-light industries like marine ranching, Guangfa Bank has partnered with policy-oriented guarantee institutions such as Guangdong Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to build a risk-sharing mechanism integrating policy guarantees, agricultural insurance, and specialized loans, turning the concept that "no collateral does not mean no credit" into reality for county-level industries.

Raoping County in Chaozhou City, a major marine county in Guangdong and a key target of Guangfa Bank's Project support, is leveraging marine ranch construction as a critical driver of rural revitalization based on its marine resource endowments.

For aquaculture operators and enterprises, quantifying operational risks in seawater farming is challenging. Natural environmental risks are unpredictable, and operators are typically asset-light with insufficient fixed assets for collateral, making traditional credit approaches difficult to apply. Seasonal production cycles and capital needs further complicate standardized credit assessment.

One leading aquaculture enterprise in Raoping was stuck precisely on the "asset-light, collateral-deficient" issue. Guangfa Bank's Shantou branch broke through traditional logic by incorporating sea area use rights, aquaculture certificates, insurance policies, and operational data into its credit evaluation system, making previously unquantifiable "implicit credit" explicit. The bank tailored a 10 million yuan special credit loan for the enterprise.

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

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

While aquaculture faces challenges of insufficient collateral and financing access, agricultural processing enterprises face different pressures. A seafood enterprise in Zhelin Town, Raoping County, processes green shrimp from the优质 waters of Zhelin Bay and Dacheng Bay. Its products are listed as "Guangdong-brand" agricultural products, serving hotpot catering, prepared foods, and supermarket fast-moving consumer goods channels. Southern white shrimp in eastern Guangdong mature primarily from May to July and September to November. During harvest season, enterprises must quickly purchase shrimp in bulk and store them at low temperatures to fulfill annual orders. However, the enterprise operates asset-light without large fixed-asset collateral, and its funding gaps are "short, fast, and urgent," making traditional credit difficult to match with actual rhythms.

Guangfa Bank's Shantou branch conducted multi-dimensional assessments based on the enterprise's actual cash flow, operational data, and credit history, ultimately approving a 5 million yuan credit line with preferential interest rates, precisely supporting the enterprise's peak-season needs for bulk shrimp procurement and fresh-keeping storage.

This "credit monetization" approach extends beyond the sea. In Huizhou, the Luofu Mountain Butterfly Valley Farm, transitioning toward an "eco + leisure" cultural tourism complex, faced similar asset-light, collateral-deficient challenges. Guangfa Bank's Huizhou branch partnered with Guangdong Agricultural Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. to customize a "Leisure Agriculture Guarantee Loan," combined with Boluo County's full guarantee fee waiver policy, opening financing channels for the project's transformation. As Guangdong accelerates construction of the South Kunlun Mountain-Luofu Mountain county-town-village high-quality development demonstration zone, the success of cultural tourism complexes tests financial institutions' ability to adapt to new county-level industrial forms.

In Meizhou, an electrical manufacturing enterprise faced funding gaps for heavy asset investments including new factory construction and equipment procurement. Guangfa Bank's Meizhou branch, after detailed operational investigation, 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 enterprises can also obtain credit support" is becoming standard practice for Guangfa Bank in serving Bay Area county-level industries. As financial evaluation dimensions expand from single fixed assets to operational data, industry prospects, and insurance credit enhancement, county-town-village enterprises gain more opportunities to be recognized.

Deepening Financial Services Along the Value Chain

Why can Guangfa Bank consistently serve these county-level specialty industries? A key reason is that its financial services go beyond simply providing loans, continuously moving closer to specific operational segments of industries.

Products follow industries. Guangfa Bank's Project specialty agricultural product shelf precisely matches funding needs across the full cycle of planting expansion, cold-chain storage, processing chain extension, and brand operations. In the marine economy sector, the bank has introduced "Marine Carbon Sink Loans," using future carbon reduction trading revenue rights from algae and shellfish aquaculture as collateral. Modern marine ranch loan volumes continue to grow, covering cities including Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Zhanjiang, Yangjiang, Shanwei, and Chaozhou.

Services reach down to counties, towns, and villages. Guangfa Bank has established 30 county-level branch outlets in eastern and western Guangdong, dispatched 50 financial assistants and village financial officers, and expanded services to more towns and villages through inclusive finance specialty branches, "agriculture, rural areas, and farmers" mobile service teams, and farmer service stations. For county-level enterprises, financing difficulties sometimes stem not just from lack of funds, but also from banks' insufficient understanding of their operations. Guangfa Bank accesses provincial big data tools such as Yuexinfen, combined with data laboratories and risk models, to enrich county-level enterprise credit information, supporting risk identification and credit decision-making. Through mechanisms such as dedicated credit plans and green approval channels, the bank provides differentiated financial support for county-level industries.

From "financing" to "intelligence support." In 2022, Guangfa Bank became the designated service bank for Guangdong Province's special rural revitalization bonds, assisting the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in drafting and launching the nation's first rural revitalization special bond reserve plan. It signed issuance advisory cooperation agreements with 15 cities, conducting over 40 training sessions and project meetings and实地 surveying over 1,000 projects. The radius of financial services extends beyond enterprise projects. Guangfa Bank's Zhanjiang branch provides定点 support to Beipo Village, Baisha Town, Leizhou City, donating special funds for rural greening improvements, planting approximately 400 trees and adding 2,400 meters of green roads, contributing to the "Green and Beautiful Guangdong" ecological initiative through practical town-village support actions.

In the Bay Area's counties, towns, and villages, the tentacles of financial services are extending inch by inch along industrial chains, road networks, and tidal rhythms.

Looking Ahead

The "Hundreds, Thousands, Tens of Thousands" Project is driving new changes in Guangdong's urban-rural development landscape. As the Project advances further, how finance can better play its resource allocation role and inject sustained momentum into county-level economies will become an important lens for observing Guangdong's high-quality development. Guangfa Bank will continue exploring new possibilities for serving county-level industries, channeling financial resources into the Bay Area's counties, towns, villages, and land-sea industrial belts, continuously empowering Guangdong's urban-rural high-quality development, and contributing to Guangdong's efforts to take the lead in advancing Chinese-style modernization. (CIS)