Category: Business

(Chinadaily.com.cn)10:42, March 15, 2021

Chinas economy continued to recover in the first two months of the year, with major economic indicators surging from last years low comparison base, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

After deducting the base effect, major indicators grew steadily, with the economy performing within the reasonable range, the NBS said.

The countrys industrial output rose by 35.1 percent year-on-year in the January-February period, compared with 7.3 percent in December, the NBS said.

Retail sales grew by 33.8 percent in the first two months on a yearly basis, compared with 4.6 percent in December, the bureau said.

Fixed-asset investment rose by 35.0 percent year-on-year in the January-February period, up from 2.9 percent for the whole year of 2020.

The surveyed urban jobless rate came in at 5.4 percent in January and 5.5 percent in February, versus the governments annual control target of 5.5 percent, the bureau said.

Despite improvements, the NBS said the Chinese economy still faces multiple challenges including the lingering uncertainties surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and global economic situation.

Domestically, the recovery has remained unbalanced and the foundation of recovery is not yet solid, the bureau said in a statement.

(Xinhua)09:27, March 14, 2021

Aerial photo taken on Feb. 24, 2020 shows the Haizhu wetland and the Canton Tower in the distance in Guangzhou, south Chinas Guangdong Province. (Photo by Xie Huiqiang/Xinhua)

The Fortune 500 company PG has planned to launch an intelligent technology innovation center this year in Guangzhou, capital of south Chinas Guangdong Province, another move of expanding the investment in the country after setting up a digital innovation center in 2017.

The digital innovation center was established just within four months in Guangzhou. Since then, the center has invested 100 million U.S. dollars in strengthening innovation in big data, artificial intelligence and other areas, said Matthew Price, president of PG Greater China in an interview with Xinhua.

Our business achievements over the years have fully proved that PGs choice of long-term investment and development in Guangzhou is a very correct decision, Price noted.

PG is just the epitome of global leading companies ramping up investment in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and beyond in recent years.

As Chinas 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) kicks off, investors from all over the world reckon that Chinas strong growth prospects, the promise of further opening-up and improvement of the business environment are attracting them to increase investment in the worlds most populous market.

EXPANDING INVESTMENT

PG, one of the first Fortune 500 companies to invest in Guangzhou, established its first joint venture and production base in 1988, which was put into production two years later.

Following more than three decades of development, China has become PGs second-largest market in the world after the United States and PGs largest e-commerce market.

About 10 percent of our business in the United States is done through e-commerce, while the number in China is 45 percent, said Price. The innovation in big data and artificial intelligence will help us better serve the consumers in the Internet era.

Like PG, a growing number of foreign companies are now beginning to set up RD and innovation centers in the Greater Bay Area.

In January, NCS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Fortune 500 company SingTel Group, launched NEXT Shenzhen Innovation Centre (SIC), its first innovation center in China. Siemens Energy also launched an innovation center for advanced energy technologies in Shenzhen in January.

The new innovation center in Shenzhen is another lighthouse project to promote the China-EU green partnership and digital partnership, said Christian Bruch, CEO of Siemens Energy AG, adding that this will bring us closer to the most dynamic energy market and, together with Chinese partners, create technologies and innovations that have an industrial and social impact.

Meanwhile, since the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was released in February 2019, more and more multinationals have moved their headquarters or regional centers to this more inter-connected area.

In January, New World Development Co., Ltd., one of the largest real estate developers in Hong Kong, signed a cooperation agreement with the Guangzhou municipal government to settle the headquarters of New World China, its flagship property arm, in the city, marking the companys new stage of layout in the Greater Bay Area.

AstraZeneca, a multinational pharmaceutical company, will also establish its south China headquarters in Guangzhou this year, with a focus on RD, operation management and innovation incubation in the Area.

IMPROVING BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

Guangzhou and Shenzhen, two major cities in the Greater Bay Area, are lauded by foreign firms for their efforts to foster an enabling business environment.

Huang Shaomei, executive director of New World Development Co., Ltd., said that the company decides to invest in Guangzhou due to its continuous improvement of the business environment.

If you invest in the city back in 2013, approval of a real estate investment project involved 100 procedures and at least 799 working days. However, the time has been reduced to 50 days in 2018 and 35 days in 2019. And now, it only takes 11 days to get approved for low-risk industrial projects, Huang said.

According to a report on Chinas business environment in 2020 issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, Guangzhou was rated as a benchmark city in all the 18 assessment indicators and won the title of best practice in four indicators.

Growing foreign investment is the attestation of a citys notable business environment. With the first business license for foreign-invested enterprises issued in 1981, Shenzhen has approved 96,000 foreign direct investment projects in total, and its accumulated use of foreign capital has reached 120.5 billion U.S. dollars.

Early this year, two workstations were established in Shenzhen, aiming to provide foreign enterprises with services including business guidance, policy interpretation, investment consulting and complaint acceptance.

In addition, a plan for helping overseas professionals better work and live in Shenzhen was formally issued in January. According to the plan, foreign nationals engaged in finance, construction, cultural tourism, medical and health care and other 11 fields will enjoy more facilitations in the city.

Shenzhen is on the way to build itself into a city with a more fair and internationalized business environment, said Guo Xiaohui, executive chairman of the Shenzhen Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment.

PROMISING GREATER BAY AREA

According to the outline of the new five-year plan, China will promote the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in an active and prudent manner.

While applauding the adoption of the plan, leaders of foreign enterprises said that the Chinese market remains appealing to global investors and the investment layout in the Greater Bay Area is just in line with their development prospects.

Leon Wang, executive vice president, international and China president with AstraZeneca, said the Guangzhou International Bio Island, where its south China headquarters is located at the core of the Area, is a highly innovative area. The setup of the headquarters is of great strategic significance in further expanding its market in the southern part of China.

Frances Yu, president of Amway China, also said that Amway will firmly seize the strategic opportunity of building a healthy China and leverage Amways advantages to help develop the health industry in the Greater Bay Area and enhance the international competitiveness of the entire industrial cluster.

The southern region of China, especially the Greater Bay Area, is where most of the EU companies set foot in China. It is renowned for its highly developed and fully competitive business environment and transparency of government policies, according to George Lau, vice chairman of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.

As outlined in the 14th Five-Year Plan, China pledges to reduce the intensity of carbon emissions, and achieve the peaking of carbon emissions by 2030, which will unleash opportunities for the EU companies with an advantage in the field of renewable energy, said Lau.

Also, a report released by the American Chamber of Commerce in South China said that about 70 percent of surveyed American companies considered the Three-Year-Plan (2018-2020) for the development of the Greater Bay Area helpful.

The Greater Bay Area is going to be a massive growth dynamic for the development in the southern region of China, said Harley Seyedin, president of the chamber.

(Peoples Daily Online)13:10, March 15, 2021

The number of China-Europe freight trains crossing the inland port of Alashankou in northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has reached 992, carrying 729,200 tons of goods as of March 12 this year, according to customs data, Xinhua News Agency reported.

A cargo train carrying British products enters China through the Alashankou Port in northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Xinhua file photo)

These trains transported a total of 92,900 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of goods as of the same date. Wang Wei, a person in charge of the customs declaration department with a local freight forwarder, said the company has served over 100 China-Europe freight trains, a year-on-year increase of 115 percent.

Ma Yun, an assistant engineer with the management department of Alashankou port, said that the port has seen an increasing amount of commodities transferred to it by air and sea this year. To keep up with the expanding volume, the port has optimized procedures such as the reloading of goods.

The Alashankou port has set up special service windows for the freight trains to make sure that clearance can be carried out 24/7. Meanwhile, it has adopted a digital bill platform and a transportation management system to improve customs clearance efficiency.

(Xinhua)15:55, March 10, 2021

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Xinhua) — U.S. businesses in China are profoundly positive about doing business in 2021 and expect ties between Beijing and Washington to improve, a survey by the American Chamber of Commerce released Tuesday shows.

The survey, reported by Bloomberg, shows that as many as 81 percent of the 345 respondents see their industries in China growing in 2021. Half of the respondents said Chinas investment environment is improving, while only 12 percent believe it is deteriorating, the lowest since 2012.

Over 60 percent are confident the government will further open up its markets, according to the study.

Moreover, 45 percent see relations with the United States improving, registering a 15 percent increase from last year.

With China leading in economic recovery and the new U.S. administration in place, our members are cautiously optimistic regarding business growth in China, said the report.

(Xinhua)15:53, March 10, 2021

Screenshot of Burger Kings Twitter Page

WASHINGTON, March 9 (Xinhua) — U.S. fast food chain Burger King on Tuesday issued an apology for its tweet on International Womens Day that read: Women belong in the kitchen.

We hear you. We got our initial tweet wrong and were sorry, said the company.

Our aim was to draw attention to the fact that only 20% of professional chefs in UK kitchens are women and to help change that by awarding culinary scholarships. We will do better next time, the company tweeted.

The company said the tweet issued Monday was supposed to bring attention to its scholarship program aimed to help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams. However, it had deleted the initial tweet due to abusive comments in the thread.

Burger King, headquartered in Miami-Dade County, in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida, was founded in 1953.

(Xinhua)09:49, March 11, 2021

TASHKENT, March 10 (Xinhua) — The strong and stable Chinese economy provides more opportunities for the Central Asian region amid the continued development of their trade and economic relations, an Uzbek expert said Wednesday.

Chinas achievements remain very attractive especially in the post-pandemic period when the Central Asian countries, including Uzbekistan, are taking measures to revive their economies, Anri Sharapov, a professor at the Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies, told Xinhua in an interview.

The driver of the expansion of Uzbekistans partnership with China is the trade, economic and investment spheres, said Sharapov. This is due to the fact that the strategic interests of Beijing and Tashkent at this stage completely coincide: Both sides are interested in preserving peace, stability and economic development in the region.

China has achieved tremendous economic success and its victory over absolute poverty 10 years ahead of schedule as set out in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the most exciting chapter in the countrys history, he noted.

All this speaks about the effectiveness of the policy of the Communist Party of China, which creatively developed the theory of Marxism and used it in a new historical era in relation to the specific conditions of China, the expert said.

Noting Chinas large economic base and the scale of its openness, Sharapov said he believed that China will provide exceptional opportunities for the economic development of the whole world.

Economic recovery in China will also boost its demand for imports of raw materials, oil and gas, and agricultural products from Central Asia that would allow countries like Uzbekistan to increase their export volumes, he added.

Also, Chinas stable economic development will help to increase its investments in Central Asias large strategic projects, Sharapov said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown Chinas success in science and technology development, and its new technological progress will provide substantial assistance to the Central Asian countries in their economic reforms, he concluded.

(Peoples Daily Online)14:10, March 11, 2021

Chinas foreign trade will maintain its momentum of fast growth this year, analysts predicted.

The countrys imports and exports surged 32.2 percent year on year in the first two months of 2021, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on March 7. Notably, exports skyrocketed 50.1 percent year on year and in February alone, exports soared 139.5 percent from a year earlier.

Photo shows Nansha Terminal of Guangzhou Port in south Chinas Guangdong province. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Chinas exports will be further boosted by the global economic rebound and robust demand from the overseas market.

Wang Tao, head of Asia Economic Research with UBS Investment Bank, said that the global economy is expected to rebound significantly this year as global COVID-19 cases look set to decrease sharply from the second quarter due to high vaccination coverage. This, he said, will help spur Chinas exports.

Zhong Zhengsheng, chief economist with Ping An Securities, also believed that Chinese exports would continue to expand this year thanks to the rising demand for Chinese products from overseas markets.

Zhong forecast that the consumer demand in the U.S., spurred by massive fiscal stimulus and increasing real estate investment in the country, would lead to a higher demand for Chinese products, giving a strong boost to Chinese exports in the next one or two quarters. Meanwhile, higher COVID-19 vaccination coverage in Europe is expected to fuel Chinas exports gradually in the next two or three quarters, Zhong added.

Chinas imports will be further facilitated by its accelerated economic recovery, which will help expand the countrys domestic market.

Last year, China was the only major economy in the world to show positive growth. Many economists believe that the Chinese economy may continue to outperform other countries this year and grow by more than 8 percent, and the robust economic recovery is expected to help expand imports.

According to the latest annual government work report, China will continue to provide policy support to beef up foreign trade growth. The country has rolled out a series of policies and measures to stabilize its foreign trade, including increasing credit supply to support small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises and expanding the coverage of export credit insurance.

(Xinhua)15:21, March 08, 2021

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) — Chinas top legislature will revise the Anti-Monopoly Law this year, according to a work report.

The annual work report of the National Peoples Congress (NPC) Standing Committee was submitted Monday to the ongoing fourth session of the 13th NPC for deliberation.

(Xinhua)14:37, February 14, 2021

BEIJING, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) — China will promote the use of renewable energy as one of the important sources of heating in the countrys rural areas during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), the National Energy Administration (NEA) said.

The administration has issued a circular to improve energy structure and utilize renewable energy for heating, calling on all localities to take measures in accordance with local conditions.

To that end, local governments should set specific targets based on local conditions and energy demand, while supporting the building of a heating system combining renewable energy with other heating methods, the NEA said.

China plans to further improve its energy structure by tapping the potential of various types of renewable energy, including solar energy, wind energy, biomass, geothermal and ocean energy

(Xinhua)14:15, March 06, 2021

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) — Chinas warehouse storage sector saw a mild decline in activity last month but is expected to maintain steady development, industry data showed.

The index tracking the sectors development went down 3.3 percentage points over the previous month to reach 48.9 percent in February, according to a survey jointly released by the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and CMST Development Co., Ltd.

A reading above 50 percent indicates expansion, while one below that reflects contraction.

The decline was mainly due to the week-long Spring Festival holiday, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, the sub-index for inventory at the end of the month rose 8.9 percentage points to 59.8 percent, with steel, non-ferrous metals, construction materials and agricultural and sideline products reporting a large inventory increase.

The sub-index for business activity expectations stood at 56.5 percent, up 1.5 percentage points from the previous month.

As business production and operation gradually gather steam, the warehouse storage sector will log a significant increase in the near future, according to the survey.