BEIJING, Jun 13: Industry leaders and executives from multinational corporations from 43 countries and regions are to meet from June 18 to 20 at the sixth Qingdao Multinationals Summit (QMS) in East China’s Shandong Province, as China continues to send out a positive signal of expanding opening-up and welcoming foreign investment.
During a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on Friday, Li Yongjie, deputy international trade representative of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) stated that the upcoming summit is a practical measure to steadfastly promote high-level opening-up and high-quality development. With the summit marking its sixth edition since 2019, China aims to convey a positive message to the world about its unwavering commitment to further opening up and welcoming foreign investment, Li said.
Themed “Multinationals and China: Connecting the World for Win-Win Cooperation,” the summit aims to build an exchange platform for policy communication, industrial coordination and project cooperation between multinational companies and China, according to Li.
The global response to the announcement of the summit has been positive.
So far, 471 representatives from foreign multinationals worldwide – including 342 from overseas and 129 from within China – have announced their intention to attend. In terms of participants, 102 will be first-time attendees, accounting for 22 percent of the total. Representing businesses from 43 countries and regions, enterprises from emerging markets account for more than 50 percent, indicating that the summit’s “circle of friends” is getting larger, according to Song Junji, vice governor of Shandong Province, at the press conference.
“This underscores the continued expansion of a more diversified market landscape. Despite external uncertainties, China will remain steadfast in pursuing high-standard opening-up,” Hu Qimu, a deputy secretary-general of the digital-real economies integration Forum 50, told the Global Times on Friday.
Since its inception in 2019, the QMS has become China’s first high-level platform for enhancing exchanges and cooperation between China and multinationals. The first five editions attracted 421 Fortune 500 companies and 967 industry leaders, culminating in 592 signed projects with a total investment of $69.8 billion. Over 95 percent of these signed projects have entered operational phase.
China has continued to be a strong magnet for foreign investment, Hu said, adding that the summit highlighted foreign companies’ strong confidence in the Chinese market. This not only reflects the rational choices of multinational corporations amid the uncertainties brought by trade frictions but also further confirms China’s central position in the global supply chain.
To further support foreign companies in investing and deepening their presence in the country, Li said China will further expand market access for foreign investment, accelerating pilot operations in fields such as cloud computing, biotechnology, and sole proprietorship hospitals, and steadily expanding autonomous operations in other service sectors.
