Foreign-invested firms confident again in China

Foreign-invested companies in China are rapidly regaining confidence as normal production and operation resume and order fulfillment continues to improve amid a steadily recovering supply chain, the top economic planner said yesterday.

Addressing a question regarding the exit of foreign firms during an online news conference, Wu Hongliang, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, said “judging by the current situation, we believe there is no severe problem of pullouts.”

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak, foreign firms faced similar difficulties, such as disrupted logistics, understaffing of Chinese companies, as well as delivering and receiving orders. Consequently, some order transfers occurred, Wu said.

As more and more Chinese companies are back online, the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain is gradually linked up again, and foreign firms are more confident in their businesses here, he said.

“We believe the fundamentals of foreign investment in China are stable,” Wu said, noting the overall advantages of China’s industrial chain have not changed despite the outbreak.

The country has a strong domestic market and is the world’s largest market in many fields, such as automobiles, electronics, machine tools and clothing, which is highly valued by the majority of foreign-funded companies, Wu said.

China also has the largest industrial system in the world with the most complete categories and supporting facilities, enabling rapid transformation from product research and development to scale production and flexible product upgrading, both of which are also highly valued by foreign-funded corporations, he said.

“Foreign firms have reiterated their fundamental development strategy of ‘In China, For China,’” Wu said. “The commission will continue to address the difficulties foreign firms face to resume work in order to help them reach full capacity as soon as possible.”

 China will continue to shorten the negative list for market access and step up efforts to advance major foreign-invested projects. “We are confident the growing dividends of China’s opening up will reap more confidence from foreign companies,” he said.