Foreign companies optimistic about investing in China
People's Daily Online
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(Photo: Xinhua)

CEOs of multinational corporations have expressed that their companies will expand investment in China and stay committed to building a closer bond between China and the world by means of increasing their presence in China.

Jochen Goller, president, and CEO of BMW Group Region China, said the German automaker is confident to invest more in China and achieve further development with the country.

BMW delivered 404,000 vehicles to Chinese clients in the first 7 months of the year, an increase of 16.6 percent year on year, Goller said during a special session of the China Development Forum which concluded Saturday in Beijing.

Zhu Xiaojing, president of dairy nutrition company Fonterra Greater China, said China is Fonterra’s largest, fastest-growing, and most strategically important market.

China does not stop pushing ahead with opening-up despite uncertainties brought by protectionist trade measures launched by certain countries against it.

Instead, the country has rolled out a series of measures to expand opening-up and improve the overall business environment, including enacting the foreign investment law, reducing the number of items subject to special administrative measures on the new negative list, and establishing six new pilot free trade zones.

Matthew Echols, a corporate vice president of Coca-Cola, said the US beverage giant is encouraged by China's efforts in improving its business environment such as the launch of new pilot free trade zones.

China is not only a big consumer market but also an important hub of innovation and industry value chains, said Goller, disclosing that nearly 80 percent of the 1,000 research and development workers of BMW Region China are Chinese.

Pascal Soriot, CEO of pharmaceutical multinational AstraZeneca, said the company’s innovation center in east China’s Jiangsu province has become an important organ of its global innovation network.