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Published: January 10,2023
Global investors’ confidence in doing business in China is growing as the country eases its COVID-19 measures.
The Financial Times reported that global investors are eager to return to China to do business.
Personnel exchanges and business travel are expected to be accelerated, according to some countries’ chambers of commerce in China.
Many foreign companies said they have begun planning high-level group visits to China, which could help restart projects and locate new investment opportunities.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that business people will once again visit China for its fast-growing market.
According to data of the Ministry of Commerce, China’s actual use of foreign direct investment (FDI) surged 6.2 percent on a yearly basis to 999.98 billion yuan ($147.65 billion) in 2020. The growth rate reached 14.9 percent to a record high of 1.15 trillion yuan in 2021. In the first 11 months of 2022, China’s FDI exceeded the level of the whole year of 2021, with a year-on-year increase of 9.9 percent, showing that the Chinese market always attracted foreign capital.
Foreign investment is also attracted by China’s irreplaceable industrial chain advantages.
According to Apple’s supplier list for the fiscal year of 2021 released in October 2022, 150 of about 190 suppliers have factories on the Chinese mainland.
Zeiss Group, a leading enterprise in the fields of optics and optoelectronics, on October 18, 2022, started construction of a new R&D and production base in Suzhou, east China’s Jiangsu Province. Xie Lei, COO of Carl Zeiss (Shanghai), said that the supporting advantages of the local mature industrial chain are one of the important reasons for Zeiss’ investment.
Basically, 80 percent of the suppliers within 200 kilometers can become good partners with us, Xie said.
Moreover, the first plant of the BASF (Guangdong) integrated base project was officially put into operation, the large-scale upgrade project of the BMW Brilliance production base officially opened in Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning Province, and Panasonic Group transferred more business segments such as cold chain equipment production and sales to China.
China has all the industrial categories in the United Nations industrial classification. Innovation is the first driving force leading the country’s development. And China’s continuous promotion of high-level opening-up also attracts foreign investment.
On January 1, China officially implemented the Catalogue of Encouraged Industries for Foreign Investment (2022 Version). The new version of the catalog has a total of 1,474 entries, a net increase of 239 entries and 167 revisions compared with the 2020 edition, the largest number of additions in recent years. This will provide more space for foreign capital to develop in China and bring more generous returns.
Recently, financial services companies including Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley have raised their forecasts for China’s economic growth in 2023. A number of international economic institutions predict that as China’s epidemic prevention and control enters a new stage, the overall economic operation is expected to rebound this year. Some analysts pointed out that China’s economy has strong resilience, great potential and vitality, and its role as an “accelerator” for the world economy is irreplaceable.
