Dongguan

[gentle music] Fernando Muñoz Bernal, originally from Colombia, has been living in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan since 2001.

For nearly three decades, Fernando has built a life, started a business, and navigated a city that has transformed itself from a bustling factory hub into a thriving metropolis.

Along the way, he's had rich and extensive interactions with local communities and government agencies.

One thing, he says, has made all the difference: 12345.

Not a secret code, not a backdoor channel, just a phone number, a government-run hotline that in his words, "Listens, responds, and solves problems." So what exactly is the 12345 hotline? How does it work for foreigners? And why does a Colombian who's been in China for almost 30 years call it the assistant I never had to hire? Our reporter, Yin Xiuqi, sat down with Fernando to hear his story.

You've been in Dongguan for many years, right?

Yes.

Yes.

So every time you want to find, say, a specialized laborer that can operate industrial drone, then you have to get that person all the way from Germany, for example, or from another province in China.

But in the case of Shenzhen and several other industrial cities in China, including Changzhou or even Dongguan, they have enough people locally.

So that made the R&D streamline quite frictionless.

And as a result, the cost will be lower and investors will have a higher confidence in the long-term return of investment.

Like I dove deep into food in China.

So I lived in Dongguan in Beijing, and that's where I really dove deep into food.

I love this.

Yeah.

And the thing with China is it's funny.

You talk to some of these guys that have been through this whole transition, some of the older guys, uh that are retiring now were the first people to start developing footwear in china in asia in in it was not western at all when i started going half of the cities like dongguan are so western you can go get pizza and spaghetti and meatballs before nobody spoke english or ever seen a white person before which is kind of insane it's it's evolved now china's gone through this industrial revolution And footwear manufacturing is moving further and further inland into other less underdeveloped countries simply because it's so expensive to produce these things and they're handmade.

So labor is the biggest thing you cut.

And sadly, as we know, like with anything, you know, you've got your sweatshops and stores.

Turn it over and there are three words on the back, "Made in China." That's true of nearly eight in every 10 toys sold in the United States according to the US Toy Association.

[machine whirring] This one starts in a factory in Dongguan in southern China.

Workers are popping tiny plastic pigs out of a steel mold.

The company, MyHogs, says that about half of its customers are American.

Our chain starts in a place most of us have never heard of.

[machines hissing] This is Dongguan in Guangdong Province in Southern China.

Here, workers are popping little plastic figures, what look like pigs, out of a mold.

Thousands of them are being placed into big crates ready for painting.

I

would be in Shenzhen.

If you want, you can go up to Dongguang.

You can pop by if you want.

Yeah, definitely.

Hong Kong itself does not have the supply chain.

But if you move to the GBA areas, you know, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, and Huizhou, there's plenty of this supply chain that can help really Hong Kong to really build its I&T competence and become a leading one in the world.

Well, Xin Song, I think that's well said.

You know, you have, you know, development program that will create a lot of housing units and also creates a lot of jobs.

Overall, I think the Northern Metropolis is a very great design in terms of both boosting new growth engine for Hong Kong as well as giving a new growth engine to the city of Shenzhen.

And for a long time, we've been thinking that Shenzhen has a lot to offer.

Like Whitman just said, it has a very strong startup and technology ecosystem backed by a supply chain in Dongguan, Huizhou and the entire Greater Bay Area.

But what Hong Kong can really add is that, first of all, Hong Kong has some of the top universities in the world.