Guangzhou held a business meeting for high-quality development on January 30. Participating businesses shared their current development opportunities and challenges, as well as their long-term plans to support the city's high-quality development.

(Photo by Shi Lei)

The meeting rolled out a slew of specific measures in foreign trade, foreign investment, foreign outsourcing, foreign economic cooperation and overseas talent attraction.

For instance, in terms of foreign trade, Guangzhou plans to build a global cross-border e-commerce seller service centre, a super supply chain centre, and an ecological innovation centre.

In addition, it will implement 20 measures to promote the high-quality development of foreign capital and attract more investment from multinational companies to boost foreign investment.

As for foreign outsourcing, it will become a high-standard national service outsourcing demonstration city and establish a digital service trade platform for a global centre of premium distribution.

Guangzhou will also promote the construction of a comprehensive service base for Chinese enterprises "going global" in Nansha, and support enterprises to set up overseas production and storage bases.

The city will attract more high-level skilled and practical talent, and explore diversified talent introduction models with Hong Kong and Macao.

"We have registered and established LDC (Guangzhou) International Trade Co., Ltd. in Nansha District, and will start operations this year. The annual trade volume is expected to reach over 3 billion RMB," said Sun Yonghua, Vice President, North Asia Region, LDC.

She said that LDC will take Guangzhou as a hub for international trade settlement in South China and rely on Nansha to support the region's food security and supply chain stability.

Last year, Guangzhou's foreign trade grew by 1.1 percent, of which cross-border e-commerce and bonded logistics both exceeded 100 billion RMB. "Thanks to the all-round services of commerce, customs and other departments, our cross-border trade volume has achieved a relatively large increase in 2022," said Li Jinling, CEO of Top Ideal Cross-border EC.

According to statistics, in the past two years, the increased investment of foreign companies in Guangzhou accounted for more than 60 percent of the city's actual use of foreign capital. In 2022, companies including Procter & Gamble, Carl Zeiss, and BeiGene all increased their investment in projects in the city. 33 large projects used foreign capital of more than 50 million USD, accounting for 83.9 percent of the total.

According to a representative of the Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau, Guangzhou has attracted 1658 investment projects from 335 Fortune Global 500 companies, demonstrating the confidence of businesses to develop in Guangzhou.