Beijing, 5 May (ZXS) -- Executives of multinational companies have set off another "fever to come to China."
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is on his first trip to China in three years. On May 5, he met with Jin Zhuanglong, Minister of Industry and Information Technology of China, and the two sides exchanged views on the development of new energy vehicles and intelligent networked vehicles.
Foreign media said that Musk will also visit Tesla's Shanghai factory during this trip. Previously, Tesla had announced that it would build a new gigafactory in Shanghai to produce Tesla's ultra-large commercial energy storage batteries.
In addition to Musk, many foreign company executives are also competing to visit China. According to China's Ministry of Commerce, since May 5, Juan Luciano, chairman, president and CEO of ADM, Ruiming Bai, chief commercial officer of Rio Tinto, and Mutib Khalebi, president-designate of Saudi National Oil Corporation in Asia, have come to China and met with officials of the Ministry of Commerce.
According to media reports, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon will host a series of J.P. Morgan summits in Shanghai, which is his first visit to Chinese mainland in 4 years.
This is not the first time that foreign company executives have set off a "coming to China fever" this year. After the adjustment of China's epidemic prevention and control policies, in just five days from March 3 to 23, executives from more than a dozen well-known multinational companies, including Apple, Esquel Group, Nestle Group, and BMW Group, met with Wang Wentao, Minister of Commerce of China.
The shuttle between business people is in essence a "vote of confidence" in China's economy. At a time when the overall downturn in the world economy, China's economy has accelerated its recovery, rebounding faster and stronger than other major economies, and the market scale has continued to expand, becoming a "must-fight place" in the eyes of foreign companies to boost performance.
According to the "Survey Report on China's Foreign Business Environment in the First Quarter of 2023" recently released by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, more than eighty percent of the surveyed foreign-funded enterprises expect the profit margin of investment in China to be flat or increase this year, and more than ninety percent of the surveyed enterprises expect the investment profit in China to remain flat or increase in the next five years.
According to Chinese statistics, in the first four months of this year, China's actual use of foreign funds amounted to 4.4994 billion yuan, an increase of 6.2% year-on-year. Among them, the actual investment in China of France and the United Kingdom increased by 2.567% and 3.323% respectively year-on-year, and the actual investment of Japan and South Korea in China also increased by 7.68% and 1.30%.
The wave after wave of foreign company executives coming to China also fully shows that "decoupling" from China is unpopular.
When Musk met with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, he bluntly said that the interests of the United States and China are inseparable, and Tesla opposes "decoupling and breaking the chain" and is willing to continue to expand business in China and share China's development opportunities.
Hua Ganglin, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, also revealed that China is "always a very important investment destination" for US companies, and US companies are still increasing investment in China, and "most companies have not transferred supply chains."
Now, China is working to attract and utilize foreign capital more vigorously. Wang Wentao once said that this year will study and promote the reasonable reduction of the negative list of foreign investment access, and further cancel or relax foreign investment access restrictions. In addition, we will also implement high standards for the national treatment of foreign-funded enterprises, and in response to relatively concentrated problems reported by foreign-funded enterprises, such as government procurement, bidding and bidding, standard formulation, etc., we will study and introduce policies and measures with relevant departments to ensure the equal participation of foreign-funded enterprises.
Analysts believe that with the improvement of China's economy and the continuous improvement of the business environment, the "fever" of foreign company executives will continue to be "hot". (End)