According to Nanfang Daily, recently, the press conference for the 15th Five-Year Plan Outline of Haizhu, Tianhe, Huangpu and Nansha Districts, themed “Viewing Guangzhou in the Opening Year of the 15th Five-Year Plan: Empowered by Science and Innovation, Led by Industries”, was held. At the conference, Tianhe District unveiled its grand blueprint for development in the next five years: its GDP will exceed 800 billion yuan by 2027, hit the trillion-yuan mark by 2030, and it will accelerate the construction of a model urban area for Chinese path to modernization.
Public data shows that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Tianhe District’s GDP crossed two 100-billion-yuan steps in a row, exceeding 700 billion yuan, leading the whole city of Guangzhou for 19 consecutive years. During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, Tianhe District targets an average annual GDP growth of over 5%, aiming to exceed 1 trillion yuan by 2030. If this goal is achieved, Tianhe District will become the first trillion-yuan urban area in Guangzhou.
There are more than 2,800 districts and counties in China, including over 900 municipal districts. For an urban area, a trillion-yuan GDP is not only a measurement of economic volume, but also a watershed of urban functional level.
Up to now, three urban areas in China have taken the lead in crossing the “trillion-yuan” threshold: in 2018, Pudong of Shanghai, as a state-level new area, saw its GDP exceed 1 trillion yuan for the first time; in 2022, Haidian District of Beijing became the second urban area with a GDP of over 1 trillion yuan. In 2025, the GDP of Nansha District of Shenzhen reached 1,010.238 billion yuan, up 6.3% year on year, making it the third municipal district with a trillion-yuan GDP across the country.
After that, Chaoyang District of Beijing, Binhai New Area of Tianjin and Tianhe District of Guangzhou are also sprinting towards the trillion-yuan goal.
As a gathering place of high-end factors and a main position of high-tech industries, the economic density and development quality of trillion-yuan urban areas largely determine the development level of the city.
Pudong New Area takes Lujiazui and Zhangjiang Science City as its core, forming a two-wheel drive of finance and technology; Haidian District, relying on Zhongguancun, gathers a large number of innovative enterprises and scientific research resources; Nansha District is the core carrying area with the most intensive innovation resources and the highest industrial level in Shenzhen.
As the largest economic district in Guangzhou, Tianhe District accounts for half of the city’s total financial industry and software industry, and ranks first in the city in the scale of industries including artificial intelligence, modern commerce, high-end professional services and marine economy. In 2025, the GDP of Tianhe District reached 701.718 billion yuan, up 4.3% year on year, accounting for more than one fifth of Guangzhou’s total.
However, to achieve the goal of becoming a trillion-yuan urban area, Tianhe District still needs to face up to existing gaps. In its previous government work report, when analyzing its own problems, Tianhe District admitted that the transformation between old and new industrial growth drivers still needs to be accelerated, and the advantages of gathering scientific and innovative resources have not been fully converted into development advantages — these “shortcomings” are exactly the key points for its next breakthrough.
Tianhe District proposed that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, it will build a spatial pattern of “dual-core leadership, axis-belt driven”, focusing on building two core functional areas, namely the Central Business District and the Central Science and Innovation District.
In terms of industrial development, it will give full play to its advantages in the agglomeration of artificial intelligence, industrial software and data elements, vigorously develop intelligent manufacturing, accelerate the construction of the 2112 Industrial Park, and build and strengthen major municipal industrial clusters including the Guangtang Embodied Intelligence Science and Innovation City, Guangzhou Low-altitude Safety Innovation Port, and Redtory · Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Physical AI Innovation Core.
For Guangzhou, the next five years are a critical period for building a central global city. As the “ballast stone” and “backbone” of the city’s economy, whether Tianhe District can cross the trillion-yuan mark is directly related to whether Guangzhou can give full play to its agglomeration power and influence in a wider scope.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account “City Evolution Theory”, written by Liu Yanmei, and authorized for release by 36Kr.