Private entrepreneurs in Fujian province must update their business and manufacturing practices if they want to move up the industry chain, officials said.

Family-owned businesses, which account for most of the private enterprises in the province, have been facing problems lately due to their insistence on a family-driven business development, rather than economic transition and upgrading.

Private enterprises account for 1 million of the total of 1.13 million units in Zhangzhou and generate roughly two-thirds of the industrial GDP in Quanzhou in Fujian province.

"Enterprises have benefited from having a global business approach, introducing top talent, developing new products and using diversified capital investment resources," said Liu Yuan, mayor of Zhangzhou.

Liu said by using traditional approaches helped entrepreneurs when the market focus was quantity rather than quality. "But such an approach saw them lose their competitiveness amid economic globalization," he said.

Liu said that many private businesses, especially those in traditional industries, such as food processing, clothing manufacture and daily necessities are being handed over to successors from the second or third generation.

"Therefore it is the perfect time for the businesses to introduce modern theories and systems of management to achieve high-quality development," Liu said.

He said private enterprises such as Datong, a high-tech enterprise specializing in manufacture of valves, has benefited from its extended focus into research and development and talent cultivation. Such experiences are worth learning and emulating, he said.

Kang Tao, mayor of Quanzhou city, said city officials and local entrepreneurs would put more efforts to drive enterprise transition and upgrading.

"Senior managers at Quanzhou-based Heng'an Group, one of the country's leading producers of tissue paper and sanitary napkins, have since last year been holding regular classes for managers from other companies," said Kang.

"Senior managers at K-boxing, a men's apparel producer from Jinjiang, has also been offered regular classes on modern business practices to second-generation successors of some private businesses," he said.

The officials also encouraged businesses to equip themselves with developments in the high-tech sector to further rejuvenate the traditional industries.

Kang said Guirenniao, a Jinjiang-based apparel maker, has started to make sports shoes weighing only 120 grams, the equivalent weight of a packet of instant noodles, by adopting modern technologies and using a newly-developed form of carbon called graphene two years back.