While mayor of Tongling, Wang launched a discussion about more free thinking in Tongling, which attracted national attention. Before leaving Chongqing, he demanded all cadres to be bold, to attempt new ideas, and brave new responsibilities. Wang has since said that innovation is the soul of Guangdong.

It is expected that fifty-two-year-old Wang will push "innovative thinking" in order to keep Guangdong in the front rank of rapidly developing provinces.

Challenges in Guangdong
After SARS struck in 2002, while Zhang Dejiang was the Guangdong provincial party chief, the GDP of Jiangsu and Shandong caught up to Guangdong, closing the gap to less than a few hundred million yuan. In 2003 and 2004, Guangdong's fixed asset investments were worth half of Jiangsu's and Shandong's.

In 2004, Guangdong's GDP was on top again, and Zhang Dejiang proposed to develop the private economy-- the same strategy that he used successfully in Zhejiang province.

As a result, from 2003 to 2006, the private economy developed rapidly in Guangdong-- adding five percent to GDP, and enrapturing other provincial leaders eager to attract investment.

At that time, Guangdong was in economic transformation— moving from an extensive, heavily natural-resource-dependent growth mode, to one more dependent on technology and innovation. In 2005, Zhang Dejiang said that the province's ability to make such a transition would decide its economic fate. He emphasized on encouraging startup—and thus private—businesses.

With this backdrop, some high-tech firms like Huawei and Zhongxing intensified operations in Guangdong under an umbrella of preferential treatment. That year, most of China's patent applications came from Guangdong.

But not all growth has been focused internally. In the end of 2003, Zhang Dejiang proposed a pan-pearl-river-delta trade net that would connect the economies of nine provinces with Hong Kong and Macao more tightly.

It is Guangdong's response to losing it's comparative advantage after the sudden emergence of the Shanghai-Bodong and Beijing-Tianjin-Tang'gu economic areas.

But this is not all that Guangdong faces. Locals often refer to the "problems of 20 million" to discuss the province's challenges. First, Guangdong has 20 million peasants who have lost land in the process of economic transformation, but have not yet been integrated in new industries. Second, there is a labor surplus of 20 million—immigrants from all over China who settle at the lowest strata of society in Guangdong, and are constant concern for the city's public security apparatus. The third" 20 million" problem refers to those populations living in impoverished areas around the Pearl River Delta.

Wang is familiar with them. In his one-hour acceptance speech delivered at his inauguration, he repeatedly mentioned "innovation" and "reform and opening up". He emphasized that Guangdong took its first steps during reform and opening up, and now soars because of it; thus only more innovation and deeper reform and opening up can help Guangdong secure a bright future.