People are diligent and spring comes early. The reporter noticed that just after the Spring Festival holiday, new trends in foreign-funded projects continued, and many foreign investors stepped up the pace of expanding their business in China. In the work deployment at the beginning of the year, relevant departments and local governments have also repeatedly mentioned stabilizing foreign investment.
Experts believe that foreign investors are optimistic about the Chinese market, which is inseparable from the steady improvement of China's economy and the continuous advancement of high-level opening up. With the implementation of more measures to stabilize foreign investment, foreign investment confidence will be further enhanced.
The signing of contracts and the start of construction are busy, and new progress in foreign-funded projects continues
The project has invested more than 31 billion yuan, and will invest 10 billion yuan this year, and carry out device commissioning and trial operation, and prepare to be put into operation by the end of the year. "On February 18, the first day of the Spring Festival, the Guangdong High-quality Development Conference was held in Shenzhen. Tan Ranke, Chairman of ExxonMobil China, revealed the latest progress of ExxonMobil Huizhou ethylene project in his speech.
Also on the first day of the Spring Festival, Saiwei Industrial Reducer (Foshan) ** South China Manufacturing Base Project (Phase I) officially started in Shunde. This is also the company's third manufacturing base outside of Tianjin and Suzhou, SEW South China Manufacturing Base. The total land area of the project is about 392 acres, which will be carried out in two phases, and the cumulative cumulative investment will exceed 10 billion yuan.
On February 19, Chongqing Bishan District held a centralized signing and commencement of major investment promotion projects, and the R&D production line of wafer transmission products of global magic, inc, a foreign-funded enterprise, was among them. On the same day, the main project of the Sino-foreign joint venture project with a total investment of 44.8 billion yuan, the Zhongsha Gulei Ethylene Project, started at the Gulei Petrochemical Base in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, and is expected to be completed in 2026.
There are also projects in the pipeline. Just after the Spring Festival holiday in the Year of the Dragon, Herbalife stepped up its project to set up a GBS (Global Business Services) center in Dalian. The person in charge of the company told reporters that in order to further embrace China's broad market space and market opportunities, Herbalife will speed up the construction of the project, concentrate the functions related to transactions and processes into the center, and improve work efficiency and standardization.
According to Nie Pingxiang, a researcher at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, from the perspective of recent trends, the high-quality characteristics of foreign investment are obvious. "The continuous signing of major manufacturing projects and the acceleration of the pace of foreign investment in China to set up R&D centers and regional headquarters in China reflect that foreign companies are optimistic about the long-term prospects of the Chinese market. She told reporters.
According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the actual use of foreign capital in China in 2023 will be 11,339100 million yuan, despite a year-on-year decline, still maintained a trillion scale, at the third highest level in history; The structure of investment continued to be optimized, and the proportion of investment in high-tech industries reached 374%, a record high; Foreign investors invested in 53,766 new foreign-funded enterprises in China, a year-on-year increase of 397%。
The implementation of opening measures has been accelerated
Enhance the confidence of foreign investors
Behind the layout of foreign investment is China's continuous expansion of high-level opening-up, from the continuous reduction of the negative list for foreign investment access, to the increase of items in the catalogue of industries to encourage foreign investment, to the improvement of the normalized communication and exchange mechanism, ......In recent years, a series of measures to stabilize foreign investment have added points to the Chinese market.
These initiatives are constantly evolving. On February 20, according to the Ministry of Commerce, as of the end of January this year, the Ministry of Commerce has held 16 roundtables for foreign-funded enterprises, with a total of more than 400 foreign-funded enterprises and foreign business associations participating, and more than 300 problems reflected in the meeting have been resolved. The relevant person in charge of the Department of Foreign Investment of the Ministry of Commerce said that for the outstanding difficulties and common problems that have not been resolved at the meeting, the Ministry of Commerce will establish a work account, conduct in-depth consultations and research with relevant departments, and introduce pragmatic measures in a targeted manner.
The Ministry of Commerce also said that this year will continue to play a good role in the roundtable system of foreign-funded enterprises, strengthen the coordination between the central and local governments and the linkage of departments, and hold a roundtable meeting every month.
Various localities are also speeding up the implementation of measures. On the first working day after the holiday, Shanghai held the 2024 Conference on Optimizing the Business Environment, and launched a series of activities of "'Chaoyong Pujiang' Investment in Shanghai Global Sharing Season", proposing to attract and gather first-class enterprises at home and abroad through continuous optimization of the business environment, and release a positive signal of reform, opening up and high-quality development to the world.
Zhejiang has also stepped up the deployment to hold the 2024 provincial "thousands of trillions" of major projects to start construction, and issued the "Zhejiang Province to expand effective investment in the "thousands of trillions" project in 2024 major construction project implementation plan, proposed to increase domestic and foreign investment, the introduction of a total investment of more than 1 billion yuan outside the province domestic projects, more than 100 million US dollars of foreign investment projects 120 projects.
The gravitational force continues to be released, and the prospect of absorbing foreign capital is promising
The favorable opening up and the advantages of a large market have further stimulated the enthusiasm of foreign investment. Tan said that China is an important part of ExxonMobil's business growth strategy, and it is also an important strategic market for ExxonMobil's new high-performance lubricants and chemical products. The person in charge of Herbalife also said that he is optimistic about China's development prospects, and is more optimistic about the big health market space, and will continue to refine the product layout.
These are not the only ones. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) surveyed nearly 600 foreign-funded enterprises showed that nearly 70% of the surveyed foreign-funded enterprises are optimistic about the Chinese market in the next five years, with more than 90% of the surveyed foreign-funded enterprises believing that the attractiveness of the Chinese market has increased or remained flat, and the number of enterprises with the intention of increasing capital in China has increased by about 4% quarter-on-quarter5 percentage points.
Nie Pingxiang said that the active introduction of measures to stabilize foreign investment from the first to the local government has enhanced the confidence of foreign investment in China. She further analyzed that China is accelerating the promotion of high-level opening up and high-quality development, providing conditions for the improvement of the quality and efficiency of foreign investment. At the same time, the best at all levels strive to optimize the business environment, build the "Invest in China" brand, and actively solve various problems faced by foreign-funded enterprises in the process of production and operation, aiming to provide a safe and secure environment for the development of high-quality foreign investment in China. "These are conducive to China's attraction of foreign investment to maintain the trend of 'stable scale and rising quality'. ”