Guangdong province's foreign trade volume with Hong Kong Special Administrative Region grew at an average year-on-year 6.1 percent over the previous 25 years, playing a role to help maintain the SAR's stability and prosperity.

According to statistics released by Guangdong Customs on Wednesday, Guangdong's import and export volume has significantly increased from 279.85 billion yuan ($43.39 billion) in 1997 to 1.17 trillion yuan in 2021.

Last year's foreign trade volume with Hong Kong reached four times more than the figure recorded in 1997 when Hong Kong returned to the motherland, Guangdong Customs said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the structure of Guangdong's export commodities to Hong Kong has been optimized over the previous 25 years, with the export of high-tech products to Hong Kong having increased significantly, said the statement.

Guangdong's exports to Hong Kong have changed from traditional labor-intensive products, including clothing, shoes and toys, to electromechanical products with relatively high added value thanks to the province's rapid development of the electronic manufacturing industry over previous decades, the statement said.

From 1997 to 2021, the export scale of Guangdong's labor-intensive products to Hong Kong has reduced by 56.8 percent and its proportion in Guangdong's exports to Hong Kong has decreased from 47.8 percent in 1997 to only 4.4 percent in 2021.

Guangdong's export of mechanical and electrical products to Hong Kong, which accounted for 30.1 percent of the province's total exports to Hong Kong in 1997, grew at an annual average growth of 11.2 percent over the same period to represent 82.1 percent in 2021.

Guangdong's new and high-tech products exported to Hong Kong witnessed an annual average growth rate of 17.2 percent between 1997 and 2021, and the proportion increased from 6.6 percent in 1997 to last year's 63 percent.

Meanwhile the export of agricultural products to Hong Kong increased from 13.98 billion yuan in 1997 to 28.11 billion yuan in 2021, with an average annual growth rate of 3 percent.