A worker is checking photovoltaic modules in a company in Feidong county, Hefei, Anhui, on January 16, 2024. Photo: VCG

Some of China's economic heavyweight provinces started working on thousands of projects in the first week after the eight-day Spring Festival holidays, with an emphasis on new productive forces and broadening the channels for private investment.

Chinese analysts said that the provinces' ambitious moves came at an earlier time than previous years, which indicated the eagerness of local governments to make a good start to economic work during the first quarter. The moves stand to boost confidence and expectations and stabilize fixed-asset investment in the first quarter.

Two days after jumpstarting on Sunday, the first working day after the Spring Festival holidays with a mobilization meeting on economic affairs to promote high-quality development, South China's Guangdong Province broke ground on many projects.

Guangzhou, the provincial capital, on Tuesday inaugurated 319 key projects scheduled for the first quarter with a total investment of 321.2 billion yuan ($44.64 billion).

In East China's Zhejiang Province, another economic powerhouse, work commenced on 333 projects with a total investment of 977 billion yuan on Sunday. Fourteen of these projects are each worth more than 10 billion yuan.

Zhejiang has specified that it wants to expedite the pace of private-sector investment growth and the ratio of private investment in total fixed-asset investment compared with the 2023 levels, as it strives to achieve a "rather challenging" targeted investment growth rate of 6 percent for 2024, the Zhejiang Daily reported, citing provincial officials.

The province pledged to roll out detailed guidelines governing the government-private capital cooperation mechanism, regularly pitch major investment targets to private investors, and maximally broaden the scope of sectors into which private investors can put money.

Also on Tuesday, East China's Jiangsu Province outlined a list of 600 major industrial projects to be implemented for 2024. The projects, which are 100 more than the number for 2023, involve a planned total investment of 1.55 trillion yuan. The value of the projects is 17.8 percent higher than that of 2023.

"Since the second half of 2023, we have been producing at full capacity to fulfill orders, and now over 80 percent of our employees have returned to their work posts," Jia Dexing, general manager of Ningbo Shine Electrical Co, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The Zhejiang-based electrical component maker has invested 670 million yuan to expand and upgrade its plant and the newly added production is set to become operational by May, Jia said.

Sun Chuanwang, a professor at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the investment binge this year is really front-loaded, reflecting an eagerness by the government to boost economic growth and the availability of a proactive fiscal policy.

"The scale, size and efficiency of projects being commenced in the days immediately after the Spring Festival holidays are set to boost confidence and the expectations of market entities," Sun said.

Sun noted that there is a marked opening in sectors that had been off-limits to private companies, which include transportation, energy, water conservancy and digital infrastructure, and a focus on new productive forces, such as the new-energy sector, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence in the projects.

Highlighting increased policy support for the economic recovery, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), on Monday published a draft proposal seeking public comment, in which it proposed ways to guide and assist private firms in targeting new growth opportunities and tapping into the central budget, and encouraging private companies to participate in public-private partnerships.

Since the NDRC set up a nationwide unified project promotion platform to guide private-sector investment in September, private capital was attracted to take part in 1,591 projects with a total investment of 1.98 trillion yuan as of end-January, the People's Daily reported on Tuesday.

In 2023, fixed-asset investment grew 3 percent year-on-year while private-sector investment contracted by 0.4 percent.