BEIJING -- Rising costs, the renminbi's appreciation, and weak external demand for China-made goods have dented industrial profits in South China's manufacturing hubs of Guangdong and Zhejiang, data released Friday showed.

Industrial output in Guangdong surged 20.9 percent year-on-year in 2011, but industrial profits only rose 2.4 percent, sharply down from over 30 percent annual growth in 2010, the local bureau of statistics said in a statement.

In a government work report last month, Guangdong Governor Zhu Xiaodan urged optimizing the economic structure and helping local enterprises move up the value chain to boost profit growth.

In Zhejiang, industrial profits rose 9.9 percent year-on-year, 37.4 percentage points lower than the growth pace in 2010, according to the Zhejiang provincial bureau of statistics.

The statistics agencies compiled the industrial profit figures using data collected from industrial businesses with at least 20 million yuan ($3.18 million)?in annual sales revenues each.

Meanwhile, small and micro-enterprises in the Yangtze River and Pearl River deltas and the economic belt surrounding the Bohai Sea also were squeezed by the credit crunch, rises in costs, and declines in orders, according to a survey by e-commerce group Alibaba and Peking University's National School of Development.

The small and micro-enterprises urged the government to tame inflation to reduce the impact of rises in material and labor costs on profitability, and also cut taxes to reduce their operation burden, according to the survey.