By Luo Shanshan, People’s Daily
At GE Healthcare’s Beijing Imaging Equipment Manufacturing Base in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, five batches of raw materials for producing a new type of diagnostic equipment have just arrived and been put into use.
“These raw materials are essential components for our new equipment,” said an employee from Beijing GE Hualun Medical Equipment Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of General Electric Company (GE).
“They hit the production line immediately after being cleared from customs, which increased the efficiency of our supply chain,” the employee added.
According to him, the company has been able to implement its global strategy at a faster pace thanks to the increasingly favorable business environment in China.
He noted that over the past 6 years, the company has outperformed its total production from the last 20 years, with two-thirds of the CT scanners sold globally coming from the company’s Beijing facility.
In Suzhou New District, east China’s Jiangsu province, a new factory of Suzhou Hybiome Biomedical Engineering Co. Ltd. (Hybiome), invested and controlled by French multinational vitro diagnostic company bioMérieux, has just been completed.
To build Hybiome into a prominent player in vitro diagnostics, the factory is planned to produce 1,000 fully automated chemiluminescence immunoassay systems per year, with an annual output value of 1 billion yuan ($137.86 million).
Over the past more than 40 years of reform and opening up, China has emerged as the world’s second-largest economy, remained the world’s top manufacturing hub for 14 consecutive years and the top trading nation for 7 straight years. The country undoubtedly plays an indispensable role in global industrial and supply chains.
This year, foreign companies continue to enjoy broader prospects in China. According to China’s Ministry of Commerce, the number of newly established foreign-invested firms in China hit 12,000 in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024, up 20.7 percent year on year. In the same period, the actual foreign direct investment (FDI) in China stood at 301.67 billion yuan.
In terms of the structure of FDI, the country’s high-tech manufacturing sector attracted 12.5 percent of the FDI inflow in the first quarter, up 2.2 percentage points compared to that in the same period last year.
Behind the decisions of multinationals to intensify their presence in China is their confidence in the country’s ability to sustain sound economic growth.
For instance, Standard Chartered Securities (China) Limited, a wholly foreign-owned securities company affiliated with Standard Chartered, has commenced securities business in Beijing. The largest Apple store in Asia has officially opened in Shanghai. The China-Saudi Arabia ethylene project has entered the full construction stage in Zhangzhou, east China’s Fujian province, with a total investment of 44.8 billion yuan.
China boasts a complete industrial system, a super-large market, and a stable social environment. The Chinese economy has strong resilience, tremendous potential and great vitality, and the fundamentals sustaining its long-term growth remain unchanged. It has become the favored investment destination for many foreign businesses.
The 2024 Kearney Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index report released in April by Kearney, a global management consulting firm, upgraded China’s ranking from seventh to third.
Besides, for the second time in the 26-year history of the FDI Confidence Index, Kearney includes an exclusive emerging market ranking to give business leaders insights into which emerging markets are most appealing to investors now and over the next three years. China ranks first on the 25-market list.
As China advances a broader agenda of opening up across more areas and in greater depth, and works to expand institutional opening up with regard to market access and the service sector, a more transparent and predictable business environment is being created for foreign companies to develop in the country.
According to a survey of more than 600 foreign-funded companies conducted by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade in the first quarter this year, over 70 percent of them are optimistic about the development prospects of the Chinese market over the next five years, and more than 50 percent believe the Chinese market has become more attractive.
Foreign businesses always say that investing in China is investing in the future, which has got a new meaning. New quality productive forces, marked by innovation and taking a substantial increase in total factor productivity as its core hallmark, are becoming increasingly attractive in global industrial development.
On April 26, German carmaker BMW announced an additional investment of 20 billion yuan in its production base in Shenyang, capital of northeast China’s Liaoning province. The investment will be used for upgrading as well as technological innovation of the Dadong plant of BMW Group’s joint venture in China, BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd. (BBA). The plant will lay the foundation for the localized production of a new generation of BMW models expected to roll off the production line in 2026.
Oliver Zipse, chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG, said that the new generation of BMW models heralds a new era of personal intelligent mobility driven by innovation and technology.
“By 2026, the first new-generation BMW vehicle made in China will roll off the production line in Shenyang. The investment underlines the importance of China in BMW’s transition towards an intelligent and connected automotive future as well as our confidence in China’s long-term economic prospects,” Zipse said.China will never drag its feet on reform and opening up. As the second largest economy in the world, China will undoubtedly provide new momentum and opportunities for the world with its continuous development and greater openness.
