What signal does China's important opinion issued by the State Council last week convey when it does this year? Stable Foreign Investment Foreign Investment | Enterprises | Foreign Investment
In recent months, in order to promote consumption through the economy, the country has issued many documents at a very high level. On August 13th, the focus was on foreign investment, and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Increasing the Attraction of Foreign Investment", proposing 24 policy measures in six aspects. Although promoting the development and growth of the private economy has been an important focus for a period of time, foreign investment expectations cannot be lowered. Although foreign-funded enterprises account for less than 3% of the total number of enterprises in China, they have created 2/5 of China's foreign trade, 1/6 of tax revenue, and nearly 1/10 of urban employment. They are also important symbols and achievements of China's reform and opening up. Against the background of the Foreign Investment Law a few years ago, what is the focus of the relevant opinions issued by the State Council this time? What problem should be solved? Newsweek's focus this week is on practicing internal skills to stabilize foreign investment.
On August 13th, the State Council issued the "24 Measures to Attract Foreign Investment", which is another economic stimulus policy following the "20 Measures to Restore and Expand Consumption" and the "28 Measures to Promote Private Economy".
Researcher Bai Ming, member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce: The support for foreign investment in these 24 policies is mainly based on our high-level opening-up to the outside world. The door of China's opening up to the outside world will not be closed, it will only open wider and wider, and it should continue to open better.
This is an ecological packaging product, and its corrugated cardboard tray is made of 100% recyclable materials, paired with stretch film packaging equipment. Compared to many non degradable and non recyclable traditional plastic packaging, such packaging boxes can reduce plastic consumption by 85%.
Lu Wei, Manager of Modivik China Packaging Business Unit: For example, for meat, it needs to have a good shelf life. In addition to temperature and microbial control, especially high requirements for oxygen and water resistance, it is actually difficult to achieve through a single material. The most difficult task is to achieve both environmental protection and functionality, which is a very difficult task. I use a thinner plastic functional layer, but I use paper plastic as the base material for the box support. I can save a lot of plastic materials on paper plastic boxes. Our core technology combines paper, which is not functional, with film, which is functional.
In 2018, the European Union announced the implementation of a plastic strategy to enhance the economy and quality of plastic recycling; Two years later, China announced its goal of being the first to ban or restrict the production, sales, and use of certain plastic products in certain regions and fields by 2020. Establishing a closed loop for the reuse of different packaging materials, as well as minimizing plastic waste and curbing resource waste to a greater extent, is a trend driven by sustainability, brand and enterprise value, and has an increasing impact on consumer purchasing motivation.
Lu Wei, Manager of Modivik China Packaging Business Unit: After I use this packaging, I can separate the bottom film from the substrate by paper plastic. The separated paper plastic can be used as an environmentally friendly material for natural degradation, and the remaining film can be recycled as dry waste for power generation.
Modivik, the company where German Li Yansi works, was established in China as early as 2008 and is committed to providing customized packaging solutions and technical support for customers in multiple industries such as food and healthcare. When providing packaging solutions to customers, they pay attention to the recycling of materials and equipment, and follow the concept of sustainable development to minimize the consumption of packaging materials, water, and energy. In 2018, they rented land to establish a Taicang factory and hope to establish deeper cooperation with China in the future.
Li Yansi, General Manager of Modivik Greater China: The demand from Chinese customers is also relatively fast, so we must invest in factories in China. This is certain, and I think we can develop more products that are completely suitable for the Chinese market in China. It means "in China, for China". Now we have great confidence, so we will definitely invest in another factory in China and buy land to build our own factory.
Lu Wei, Manager of Modivik China Packaging Business Unit: In China, environmentally friendly packaging is still in its early stages, and this is still an undeveloped market. We hope to bring advanced technology to China, create upstream and downstream partners, and drive this industry to produce products through the industrial chain.
Bai Ming, member and researcher of the Academic Degrees Committee of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce: In 2013, China's first negative list of foreign investment access appeared. Now, this negative list is getting shorter and shorter, which means that it can be done without any legal prohibition. The scope of foreign investment allowed to enter China is increasing, with a large proportion of projects being high-tech projects, as China now emphasizes innovation driven development. In the early stages of reform and opening up, foreign investors valued China's low labor costs more. Now, foreign investors value China's market, partners, and industrial division of labor system more. Domestic partners are not just about money, you also need to have your own technical strengths and marketing channels.
In fact, Li Yansi has been living in China for more than 20 years and is full of expectations for the development of enterprises in China. In the "24 Measures for Attracting Foreign Investment," he not only emphasized the need to "protect the national treatment of foreign-invested enterprises," but also expressed the need to "improve the level of investment and operation convenience.".
Researcher Bai Ming, member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce: On the one hand, from the perspective of national treatment, foreign investors need to be treated equally so that they can have a sense of belonging and identification. Their greatest concern is equal competition, such as participating in bidding. Another aspect is intellectual property protection, which prohibits foreign enterprises from forcing them to transfer technology. Furthermore, in terms of convenience in daily life and convenient personnel mobility, it is also an important support for investment facilitation in this field. If you help him solve this problem, I believe many overseas employees and foreign employees of foreign-funded enterprises are willing to work in China.
This week, this self driving bus, which demonstrated its operation on public roads in the city, made its debut in the Volkswagen Park in Hefei, Anhui Province. In this small bus that can accommodate nine people, the passengers are all employees of the company, and the driver sitting in the driver's seat is not a traditional driver, but a safety officer preparing for emergencies. By relying on cameras and LiDAR, this car can effectively scan and recognize surrounding obstacles, autonomously sense road information ahead, and achieve autonomous driving.
Ding Mengnan, Logistics Planning Engineer at Volkswagen Co., Ltd.: We are equipped with a total of four cameras, which can visually recognize pedestrians, vehicles, and traffic lights on the road. We also equip the vehicles with six LiDARs, which are used to scan obstacles around the vehicles and detect and perceive distances. The vehicle is also equipped with a centimeter level accuracy lane positioning chip, which enables centimeter level positioning of the vehicle during our driving process.
This new energy bus has a range of 150 kilometers and travels between the company's factory and research and development center, with a total length of 10 kilometers. The research and implementation of this autonomous bus route was led by the Hefei Municipal Government, and was completed through cooperation between Volkswagen Anhui, a foreign-invested enterprise, and local enterprises in Hefei.
Ge Wandi, CEO of Volkswagen Co., Ltd.: It is an L4 level autonomous bus, and this project was jointly developed by us with local partners and the local government in China. We are deeply proud of the results of this project. This project is the first in Anhui Province and also one of the first application examples in China. Our cooperation with the Hefei Municipal Government has yielded fruitful and very close results. We share a common vision, share resources, and work together in talent, investment, and innovation. Behind me is proof of our collaboration.
Helping enterprises achieve localized research and development, production, and sales in China has always been Gewan dysprosium's aspiration. He has been in Hefei for over two years. During this period, Volkswagen Anhui was formed, which is also the third joint venture company of this old car company outside of FAW Volkswagen and SAIC Volkswagen. Because it is aimed at the field of new energy vehicles, we chose Anhui, which has advantages in the new energy industry chain.
Volkswagen CEO Ge Wandi: My Chinese name is Ge Wandi. I really like the name Ge Wan dysprosium because it is closely related to Anhui and sounds very similar to Anhui. The electrification of the Chinese automotive market is very rapid, and China has a deep historical connection with Volkswagen. We will continue to develop on this basis. We hope to continue to play a leading role in the era of electric vehicles. We will deepen our "in China, for China" strategy and hope to meet the real demands of Chinese customers at a corresponding speed in order to maintain competitiveness in the market.
Zhang Rui, Director of the Foreign Investment Management Department of the Department of Commerce of Anhui Province: Hefei has a complete new energy vehicle industry chain, as thousands of supporting factories for new energy vehicles have already settled in Hefei, including some well-known domestic automobile manufacturers. Because a new energy vehicle industry cluster has already formed in Hefei, I believe that for Volkswagen's new energy vehicle industry, settling in Anhui should have great advantages and attractiveness.
After more than two years of preparation, the first batch of officially produced new energy vehicles are expected to be launched by the end of this year. However, achieving localized production alone is far from enough. In May of this year, Volkswagen plans to invest 1 billion euros in its technology research and development center, which will also settle in Hefei. This center, which gathers research and development, innovation, and procurement, will be the largest research and development base for this company after Wolfsburg, Germany.
Ge Wandi, CEO of Volkswagen Co., Ltd.: The R&D center we want to establish here is expected to have over 2000 R&D personnel engaged in the development of new products. It will be our largest research and development center outside of Germany. By establishing a research and development center similar to our headquarters in Germany, the development cycle of our new products and technologies will be shortened by about 30% in order to meet the development speed of the Chinese market.
Research and innovation are the soul of the development of the industrial chain. The establishment of research and development centers not only directly creates a large number of high-quality employment opportunities, but also fills the most important link in the industrial chain. With the improvement of the industrial chain ecosystem, various upstream and downstream enterprises, projects, and talents will also come along.
Zhang Rui, Director of the Foreign Investment Management Department of the Department of Commerce of Anhui Province: It can be said that this has injected strong impetus into the ecological construction of the new energy industry chain in Anhui. Currently, Volkswagen Anhui has established cooperative relationships with over 1500 suppliers, including more than 20 key suppliers involved in the manufacturing of new energy vehicles, all located in Hefei. By establishing a complete value chain including production, research and development, testing, market sales, and customer service, Volkswagen has become an important component of the new energy vehicle production system in Hefei.
The research and development centers established by foreign-funded enterprises have received increasing attention in recent years due to their high technological content and ability to allocate innovative resources. Among the 24 measures introduced by the State Council this week to attract foreign investment, the first one proposes to support foreign investment in establishing research and development centers in China, and encourage foreign-invested enterprises and their established research and development centers to undertake major scientific research projects. In the view of experts, foreign-funded enterprises have gone through two stages: selling products in China and manufacturing products in China. Now, they have moved towards the stage of creating products in China, which reflects a "qualitative" improvement in the level of utilizing foreign investment.
In March of this year, a new production base investment cooperation agreement worth 450 million US dollars was signed with Qingdao High tech Zone. Just five months later, on Monday, August 14th, foreign company AstraZeneca further increased its investment by $250 million.
Wang Zhen, Deputy Director of the Management Committee of Qingdao National High tech Industrial Development Zone: At that time, they asked us to leave some space appropriately. We didn't expect it to be so fast from a time perspective. This indicates that this multinational pharmaceutical company has special confidence in the investment environment of our entire China and the Chinese market.
AstraZeneca is one of the top ten biopharmaceutical companies in the world. Since entering China in 1993, it has focused on the most urgent needs of Chinese patients, including cancer, cardiovascular, kidney, metabolism, rare diseases and other treatment fields. Nearly 40 innovative drugs have been brought to China. This additional investment has increased the production capacity of canned goods and added a new production line for inhaling aerosol packaging. After being put into use, it can not only expand the production capacity of the supply base, but also bring development vitality to the local medical and health industry.
AstraZeneca Global Executive Vice President Wang Lei: We highly value our cooperation with Qingdao, Shandong. Firstly, Shandong is an important province in the north, with a population exceeding many major European countries. It is a huge pharmaceutical market, and many leading pharmaceutical companies are located in Shandong. In addition, Shandong and Qingdao also have a lot of support for rare disease patients, and comprehensive professional government functional departments have cooperated with us in all aspects. This kind of cooperation is not only about attracting investment, but also a long-term industrial cooperation.
From the signing of the investment agreement on March 25th, to the completion of land bidding on June 20th, and then to the official launch of planning and design scheme public announcement on July 20th, the project set a record for foreign-funded enterprises in Qingdao High tech Zone, with only 30 days from land acquisition to planning scheme public announcement. Wang Zhen is in charge of investment promotion work and participated in the process of the project standing out from multiple rounds and intercity competition.
Wang Zhen, Deputy Director of the Management Committee of Qingdao National High tech Industrial Development Zone: The main goal is to optimize the business environment and make significant improvements in both soft and hard aspects to attract more enterprises in these fields to settle down. The first step for AstraZeneca is to tailor a tailored support plan, which includes both policy support and the increasing improvement of education, medical care, commerce, and transportation facilities after the arrival of talents. It can be said that it has filled the gap in Shandong Province where there were no multinational pharmaceutical companies and factories or research and development centers were established.
In the "Opinions on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Increasing the Attraction of Foreign Investment" released on August 13th, it was mentioned that "on the premise of complying with relevant laws and regulations, accelerate the landing and production of foreign investment projects in the biopharmaceutical field"; And encourage foreign-invested enterprises to reinvest domestically. This time, Qingdao is able to attract investment and enhancement from multinational medical and pharmaceutical leading enterprises. In addition to its huge development potential and support for the development of this industry in the area, it also has a proactive investment promotion strategy and a superior business environment.
At 6 o'clock in the morning, the biopharmaceutical investment promotion team rushed to Yantai to pursue foreign company executives to discuss projects; At the same time, the high-end manufacturing investment promotion team has arrived at Xinqi Street to meet with the enterprise manager and coordinate investment policies. Running non-stop is the norm for the staff of Ningbo Beilun Investment Promotion Bureau in the first half of the year. As a result, Beilun has attracted 29 key foreign investment projects, and "old friends" have once again increased their investment.
Xu Tao, Deputy Director of Investment Promotion Department of Investment Promotion Bureau of Ningbo Economic and Technological Development Zone: Because enterprises are also facing difficulties now, we feel that the explanation over the phone may not be very clear. Let's go to his door and tell him which departments need to be found, how to apply, and what are the requirements. We will explain to him in more detail. Reflecting on some of the problems encountered, we will definitely do our best to help it solve.
He Hongyan, Director of the Investment Promotion Bureau of Ningbo Economic and Technological Development Zone: It has been six months now, and some foreign enterprises hope to accelerate the implementation of land, including energy consumption, indicators, and other aspects. They also have firm confidence, optimistic about China's high-quality development in the future, and have great confidence in China.
In Haizhu District, Guangzhou, the investment promotion department has been upgraded from a service officer to a partner. Starting from providing services and policies to enterprises, gradually addressing the real needs of production and development, seeking orders for them, and seeking common development. In addition, it also helps foreign talents who come to solve their worries in life.
Chen Wenyu, Deputy Director of the Investment Promotion Bureau of Haizhu District, Guangzhou: In terms of service, in recent years, we have mainly provided our enterprises with good and high-quality services through the education of talent's children, including talent's medical care, talent apartments, and so on.
On August 18th, the Ministry of Commerce released data stating that in the first seven months of this year, 28406 new foreign-invested enterprises were established nationwide, an increase of 34%, indicating an increase in foreign confidence in the Chinese market. The Opinion also mentions "encouraging regions to introduce supporting measures tailored to local conditions and enhancing policy synergy.". How to attract foreign investment according to local conditions in the future? Experts suggest that local governments can focus on cultivating new advantageous pillar industries, deepening reform and opening up, and lowering market access barriers.
According to Hong Kong's Wen Wei Po, a bloody knife stabbing case occurred at Hollywood Square in Diamond Hill last Friday. The police arrested a 39 year old man on suspicion of stabbing two young women, one of whom was stabbed over 30 times. The suspect appeared in the Kwun Tong Magistrates Court this morning. The police at the Kwun Tong Magistrate's Court temporarily charged the suspect with two counts of murder last Sunday. The suspect appeared in court this morning at the Kwun Tong Magistrate's Court. Acting Chief Magistrate Zheng Jihang, after listening to the opinions of both the prosecution and defense, decided to postpone the hearing for two weeks until 9:30 am on June 19th, waiting for two psychiatric expert reports to be obtained. The defense did not object. Zheng Jihang approved the application, and the defendant needs to be temporarily detained at Xiaolan Mental Hospital. When the suspect appeared in court, he wore black framed glasses, a light gray shirt, and camouflage green shorts, and was able to answer the judge's questions normally. accordingly
Currently, the highly anticipated summer harvest work in Henan has shifted its focus to the northern region of Henan. According to the Henan Daily client, on June 4th, Lou Yangsheng, Secretary of the Henan Provincial Party Committee, presided over a special video scheduling meeting on the "Three Summers" work in the province, listened to the situation report, analyzed and judged the situation, and arranged and deployed the next steps of work. Governor Wang Kai made specific arrangements. On the evening of May 31, 2023, in Xiafutou Village, Xuliang Town, Boai County, Jiaozuo, Henan Province, villagers braved light rain in the wheat fields to harvest wheat. Visual China Map Lou Yangsheng pointed out that the current summer harvest battle in the province has entered the decisive stage. Doing a good job in summer harvest in northern Henan Province is related to the summer grain yield and seed safety. We should focus on seizing opportunities and make every effort to organize the wheat harvesting work in the northern Henan region, minimize losses, and protect the interests of farmers to the greatest extent possible. Accurate forecasting is essential
On June 4th, the return capsule of the Shenzhou-15 manned spacecraft successfully landed at the Dongfeng landing site. Astronauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming, and Zhang Lu all safely and smoothly exited the spacecraft, and the Shenzhou-15 manned flight mission was a complete success. What innovative technologies are there to safeguard the return journey of Shenzhou 15 in this mission? On June 4th, the return capsule of the Shenzhou-15 manned spacecraft successfully landed at the Dongfeng landing site. Xinhua News Agency reporter Lian Zhen photographed that "the sky and the ground" ensure the high-precision return of spacecraft. For the Shenzhou series spacecraft, the return and re-entry GNC technology is directly related to the life safety of astronauts. Taking the success of this return mission as a symbol, China has comprehensively upgraded its GNC system since the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft, which features autonomous rapid rendezvous and docking, autonomous adaptive prediction and re-entry return guidance, and has completed a comprehensive update and replacement
At noon today, a Chinese naval fleet consisting of Zhanjiang and Xuchang ships arrived at the assembly area of the "Comodo-2023" multinational maritime joint exercise. It is understood that the assembly anchorage for this exercise is 3 nautical miles long and 1.5 nautical miles wide, capable of anchoring up to 50 ships. Naval vessels from various countries participating in the exercise will also arrive at the anchorage today to complete the assembly of the "Komodo 2023" multinational maritime joint exercise, which is held every two years by the Indonesian Navy. This year is already the fourth edition of the exercise. The exercise will be held from June 5th to 8th in the city of Jakarta, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, including the port and sea phases. In the coming days, participating navies from various countries will participate in ship reading style search and rescue exercises, maritime interception and damage management exercises, aerial exercises, and other course objectives exercises
On the evening of June 1st, the US Senate passed a bill on the federal government's debt ceiling and budget, and the flame of the US debt bomb was temporarily extinguished at the last moment. The two parties in the United States have staged an extreme tug of war over the US debt bomb. Some experts believe that the US debt crisis is the result of the reckless politics promoted by the US dollar hegemony, and the underlying cause of this crisis is the highly polarized political system of the US. Since the end of World War II, the US Congress has adjusted the debt ceiling more than a hundred times. The recurring debt crisis will not only have a catastrophic impact on the US economy and people's livelihoods, but also continuously erode the value of US dollar assets such as government credit and US bonds, bringing significant and far-reaching impacts to the global economic landscape. 【