Foreign investment in Shanghai a sign of opening-up success

Shanghai announced a batch of foreign investments totaling 23.4 billion yuan (US$3.36 billion) on Saturday, a reflection of foreign investors' confidence in the city and its lasting attraction for foreign investment.

The projects included 1 billion yuan from SAIC and GM to set up a financing and car rental company in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, which will run car rental business to raise capital.

Decathlon, an industry leader from France, will step up investment, pledging as much as 1 billion yuan to build headquarters for its sports equipment branch in Shanghai.

German headquartered SAF-Holland GmbH, the biggest manufacturer of components and parts for commercial vehicles worldwide, will invest 208 million yuan to set up regional headquarters in Shanghai.

Omron will increase its investment by 70 million yuan to found a second plant, which will function to enhance its production of sensors. According to its plan, by 2020 it will be able to produce 1.7 million sensors per month, doubling its production of 2017.

Takeda Chemical Industries, the biggest pharmaceutical company of Japan, will further invest 809 million yuan in Shanghai to realize its five-year project to launch more than 7 new medicines in China, covering areas such as tumors, digestion and neuroscience.

NEXTEV Co Ltd will step up 16.66 billion yuan to expand its R&D expenditure in electrification, intelligent connection and lightweighting.

Other industrial giants like Kao, Lego and ASUS will also increase their investments in Shanghai.

"This on the one hand shows that foreign enterprises are committed to Shanghai, and on the other hand it indicates Shanghai’s determination to deepen opening-up has worked," said Shanghai Vice Mayor Wu Qing.

More foreign investment

In the period from January to September 2018, Shanghai has attracted more and more foreign investment, with the number of projects, contractual foreign investment and actual foreign investment all growing from the same period last year.

A total of 3,704 new foreign-funded projects were set up in the city in the first nine months, up by 17.8 percent year on year. Contractual foreign capital (including capital increment) rose 20.4 percent to US$33.62 billion, and actual foreign investment reached US$12.94 billion, up 2.1 percent from a year earlier.

By the end of September 2018, the city had introduced 95,100 foreign investment projects with contractual foreign investment of US$457.85 billion and actual foreign investment of US$236.08 billion.

Of note, the structure of foreign investment has been upgraded and optimized, with 3,592 newly-launched projects in the service sector bringing US$11.54 billion, accounting for 89.2 percent of total actual foreign investment.

Also, Shanghai remained the city with the largest number of regional headquarters for multinational enterprises in China. By the end of September this year, 653 regional headquarters of multinational corporations had been introduced, including 79 Asia-Pacific headquarters, 358 investment companies and 438 research and development centers.

The Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has also achieved substantial growth in introduction of foreign capital. From January to September, the total amount of foreign investment there reached US$5.03 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 16.8 percent, and its proportion of total foreign investment in the city rose to 38.9 percent.