Stability and certainty magnet to foreign firms

The 6th Qingdao Multinationals Summit, which was held last week in Qingdao, Shandong province, provided a platform for 570 business executives of 465 multinational companies from 43 countries and regions to have extensive discussions on the opportunities that China is creating for multinational corporations in its pursuit of high-quality development in the new era.

It was their consensus that China continues to demonstrate strong economic resilience and growth potential, and that it boasts an extremely large domestic market and the world's most complete industrial system.

Paying strategic importance to the role of multinational companies in not only creating jobs and driving economic growth but also connecting China with the world, the country is unswervingly endeavoring to create a world-class business environment, promote high-standard opening-up to the outside world, and safeguard the multilateral trading system.

According to a report published by researchers with the Ministry of Commerce during the event, the aforementioned advantages of China have created a large space for the long-term capital appreciation and the core competitiveness improvement of multinational companies.

Despite the complex and volatile international environment in recent years, China's expanding market scale and improved business environment have attracted many multinational companies, driving upward the number of foreign-funded enterprises in the country, the diversification of foreign investment sources, and the continuous optimization of the foreign investment structure.

As the report points out, for multinational companies, investing in China is not only a choice of the market, but also an investment in certainty. China's policy certainty, development stability and strategic coherence have become the best support for enterprises' long-term development strategies.

Looking to the future, a stable, fair and open policy environment is of increasing importance for foreign capital to seek long-term development. From fully opening up the manufacturing industry to promoting institutional opening-up in terms of rules, regulations, management and standards, China is taking concrete measures to improve its institutional environment to provide a rule-of-law and transparent business environment for both domestic and foreign enterprises.

Thanks to these efforts, in 2024, 59,000 new foreign-invested enterprises were established in China, an increase of 9.9 percent year-on-year, and the actual utilized foreign capital in the country reached $116.2 billion. In the first quarter of this year, the import and export volume of foreign-funded enterprises reached 3 trillion yuan ($417.4 billion), achieving positive growth for four consecutive quarters, according to the report.

It is worth mentioning that the host city, Qingdao, took advantage of the meeting to collect the views of multinational companies on the local business environment. The city government, which is committed to providing one-stop full life-cycle services for enterprises, decided to take several measures immediately to optimize the business environment based on the feedback it received.

That is just one example of how local governments are doing their best to attract foreign investors and businesses, whose connections with the world market in capital, talent, technology and management are of special importance to not only driving local economic growth but also improving the quality of local development.

Foreign companies' development in China over the past more than 40 years indicates the win-win nature of their engagement with the country, which is no longer a source of cheap labor and natural resources or a lower-end manufacturing base, but increasingly a source of talents and investment, and a dynamic incubator of innovations and a world-class market.

Foreign companies should be left with no doubt that no matter how the international situation changes, China remains steadfast in advancing reform and opening-up. Its door will only open wider, and its policy of utilizing foreign capital has not changed and will not change. The country has been, is, and always will be an ideal, safe and promising investment arena for foreign investors.