Foreign investors express confidence in Chinese market at Global Investment Promotion Conference

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Foreign investors expressed confidence in the Chinese market at the the Global Investment Promotion Conference held on Friday in the city of Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Themed "Invest in Suzhou for a Win-win Future", the conference attracted more than 1,000 participants, including representatives from 429 of the Fortune Global 500 companies.

Known for its beautiful canals and rich cultural heritage, Suzhou is also an industrial powerhouse and home to one of the largest industrial parks in China.

Total investment for the projects signed at the conference amounted to around 372 billion yuan (about 52.4 billion U.S. dollars), including 30 projects from the Fortune Global 500 companies. These projects span various high-tech industries, including new energy, high-end equipment, advanced materials, and biopharmaceuticals.

At the conference, executives from major corporations discussed their increasing investment and collaboration in China, highlighting the country's economic appeal and supportive industrial environment.

"We are confident in expanding our business within China, a significant market for our company. For Japan, it should keep close ties with China," said Keiichi Morikawa, President of IHI Rotating Machinery Engineering.

The conference also highlighted Suzhou's strategic focus on ten industrial clusters and 30 industrial chains.

"In March last year, we established Olympus' first overseas production base in Suzhou Industrial Park. The support we received was pivotal, and we are looking to deepen our research and development and other cooperations with China," said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Executive Officer of Olympus Corp.

The investment landscape for foreign companies in China is evolving, with a shift from basic investment to mergers and acquisitions that capitalize on China's high-quality development model, which extends even to the biomedical sector.

"We fully utilize the strengths in bioluminescence immunity products that local companies have, in terms of single products, patents and research and development, to counterbalance some of Merieux's product line or channel disadvantages," said Zhang Fuhai, senior director at BioMerieux China.

Foreign investors express confidence in Chinese market at Global Investment Promotion Conference

China has invested nearly 900 billion yuan (about 124.43 billion U.S. dollars) to strengthen the protection of key national ecological functional areas, involving 810 counties, covering 4.84 million square kilometers, and accounting for 50.4 percent of China's territorial area.

National-level ecological functional areas serve as important ecological security barriers that support soil and water conservation, wind prevention and sand fixation and biodiversity conservation.

Since 2008, the central government of China has introduced a transfer payment policy for funding key national ecological functional areas.

In a bid to make better use of the funds, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and the Ministry of Finance issued more than 20 measures, covering the monitoring and evaluation of environmental quality, organizational efficiency and implementation of projects.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment established an integrated ecological environment monitoring network to improve the accuracy of monitoring and evaluation.

For instance, for forests, grassland, waters, and wetlands, experts use high-resolution satellite remote sensing technology to capture images that can forecast ecological trends, while for areas facing immediate threat, experts can use drone systems to investigate.

As high as 85.8 percent of the counties located in China's key ecological functional areas have excellent ecological quality, 22.9 percentage points higher than the national average.

China invests nearly 900 bln yuan to protect key ecological functional areas