Foshan city’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) topped 1 trillion yuan (about 145.3 billion US dollars) in 2019, becoming the third city in South China's Guangdong province to surpass this number after Guangzhou and Shenzhen, according to Nanfang Daily.

File photo: VCG

Statistics show that manufacturing is an important driving force for Foshan's GDP to exceed one trillion yuan. In the first 10 months of 2019, the added value of industries above Foshan's scale increased by 7.3 percent year on year, 3 percentage points higher than the province's 4.3 percent, among which the added value of advanced manufacturing increased by 8.9 percent.

By the end of 2018, the GDP of 16 Chinese cities had exceeded 1 trillion yuan. Among them, many trillion-level cities are provincial capitals or sub-provincial cities, and Foshan is a rare prefecture-level city.

China's GDP is expected to approach 100 trillion yuan in 2019. This "joining the trillion club" means that Foshan generates nearly 1 percent of the country's GDP from just four-tenths of a million acres of land. 

(Compiled by Wang Zi)