Shanghai remains most attractive Chinese city for foreign investment, expert says - 2024-01-11
Shanghai is still the most attractive Chinese city for foreign investment, according to the director of the International Investment Research Office of the Institute of World Economy at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.
Although the scale of foreign-invested companies in Shanghai has declined, the structure of foreign investment in the eastern Chinese city has been optimized as investment in high-end services and high-tech manufacturing has increased, Sun Lixing said at an event on Wednesday.
In the first 11 months of last year, the number of foreign-invested enterprises in Shanghai rose 34 percent to 5,425 from a year earlier, according to data from the municipal government. The actual amount of foreign capital used fell 1.4 percent to nearly USD22.1 billion.
In the same period, 48,000 new foreign-invested firms were established in China, up 36 percent, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce. The actual amount of foreign capital used dropped 10 percent to CNY1 trillion (USD140.9 billion).
Foreign investors have not fully established trust in China's economic development, especially since the country's policy transparency has not met expectations, Sun noted. In this regard, China is speeding up the implementation of high-standard international rules, strengthening its legal system, and building a fair, transparent, and predictable business environment, he added.
"In terms of business environment, Shanghai is at the forefront of the country," Sun said. Shanghai has held a business environment conference every year since 2018, he added, noting that the city issued the sixth version of its action plan for optimizing the business environment last year.
A market-oriented, internationalized, and legalized business environment is necessary for foreign and private enterprises to thrive, Tang Yunyi, deputy director of the Institute of Applied Economics at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said at the same event.
In the past, China's policy mainly aimed to allow private enterprises to enter more market industries, while last year's new policy encouraged innovation and proposed to create a fair, competitive market environment for private firms, Tang pointed out.
Culture is a new driving factor of Shanghai's tourism
Culture is becoming the driving factor for tourism in Shanghai, Cao Yixia, a researcher at the Institute of Applied Economics at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said at the event when discussing the city's new consumption growth points.
This year, the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai, which embodies Chinese aesthetics, has attracted a large number of visitors, Cao noted.
On New Year's Day, the Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival received 600,000 visitors, up 79 percent from a year earlier, with the sales volume soaring 128 percent to nearly CNY51.9 million (USD7.3 million), Cao said, citing data released by the person in charge of the Yuyuan Garden.
Almost 7.2 million tourists traveled to Shanghai during the three-day New Year holiday, up over 16 percent from the same period last year, bringing the city about CNY11.8 billion (USD1.7 billion) worth of tourism consumption, up 24 percent in the period, Cao added.
Source: Yicai Global
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