The 6th Qingdao Multinationals Summit opens in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province, on June 19. [Photo/WeChat account: qingdaoxuanchuan2023]

The 6th Qingdao Multinationals Summit opened in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong province, on June 19.

Featuring the theme "Multinationals and China - Connecting the world for win-win cooperation", this summit serves as a high-level platform for policy dialogue, industry integration, and project collaboration for multinational corporations. Additionally, the event featured the continued release of the Multinational Corporations in China research report series.

A total of 465 multinational corporations are attending this year's event, including 135 Fortune Global 500 companies and 330 industry-leading enterprises. Participating companies hail from 43 countries and regions, with over 50 percent representing emerging market economies. Reflecting a trend towards service industry openness, over 20 percent of attending multinational corporations were engaged in modern finance, artificial intelligence, and related sectors.

Notably, in addition to traditional markets like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Germany, and France, there is an increased presence of emerging market participants from the ASEAN, the Middle East, and Africa, with nine countries such as Vietnam and Egypt attending for the first time.

As the permanent host city of the summit, Qingdao is leveraging its resource advantages to attract global high-quality resources, fostering ongoing cooperation and exchange with multinational corporations.

Recently recognized as a Gold Medal City for China's investment environment by the World Bank multiple times, Qingdao stands out as one of the most open cities with pioneering policies in cross-border investment facilitation, financial openness, and was selected as a comprehensive pilot city for expanding service sector openness by the national government.

This year, Qingdao introduced a special action plan for foreign-funded enterprises to promote increased investment and production expansion, further enhancing efficient services. These initiatives provide multinational corporations with a transparent, stable, and predictable business environment.