Correspondent Jing Zhongyan
(10th Dec 2020, Shenzhen) The second global investment promotion conference winded up Tuesday with 780 billion yuan ($119.5 billion) worth of contracts in Shenzhen, cementing its leading position for foreign investment in China.
A total of 242 projects were signed at the conference, the city’s most important investment event. They include the South China headquarters project of US retail giant Costco Wholesale, the innovation center project of the world leading health technology company Royal Philips and the research and manufacturing base project for the COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by AstraZeneca and Kanvax.
Wang Weizhong, Party secretary of Shenzhen, said that Shenzhen will be widely open its market and further upgrade its business environment to better facilitate the investors across the globe to work and live.
The city will offer 15 square kilometers of industrial space this year for global enterprises to set up business there, the conference was heard. In 2019, 30 square kilometers of land space were taken out by the local government.
Wang reiterated that any high-quality project that meets Shenzhen’s industrial development strategy and the city’s high-quality and sustainable development demand will be able to secure land in the city.
A pioneer of China’s reform and opening up, Shenzhen has been a popular destination for foreign investment. According to the Commerce Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality, Shenzhen’s actual use of foreign capital amounted to $7 billion in the first 10 months of this year, growing 7.58 percent year-on-year, with Hong Kong special administrative region, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Singapore being main sources.
Deloitte indicated in its latest report on the development environment of Shenzhen’s information technology and biotechnology industries, released at the conference, that the research and development input in Shenzhen has accounted for 4.2 percent of the city’s gross domestic product, a level that some of the developed countries reach.
It attributed the consistent development of the technological innovation in Shenzhen to three key aspects–the highly open and innovative system and policies, effective allocation of the fund and professionals and fair legal system and transparent governance, according to the report.
Qualcomm, a world leading wireless technology company, said it chose to set up its global innovation center in Shenzhen because of the complete industrial chain for manufacturing and hardware as well as its open fair and practical business and innovation environment.
