Between March 18 and 20, the 2017 China Development Forum was held in Beijing. More than 70 leaders of Fortune 500 corporations attended the forum to jointly discuss the economic transformation and structural reform of China and the world. During the forum, nearly half of the leaders of Fortune 500 had one-to-one meeting with Guangzhou Delegation or appointment for communications and exchanges to discuss major cooperation issues.

Guangzhou delegation had one-to-one meeting with a total of 18 Fortune 500 corporations include giant multinationals such as Apple, Qualcomm Inc., Siemens, Foxconn and Allianz SE which have large investment in Guangzhou. For instance, Foxconn’s 10.5G 8K display full ecological industrial park with investment of 61 billion yuan started construction in Zengcheng, Guangzhou. As the world’s largest professional electronic producer, Foxconn brought the world’s most advanced display project to Guangzhou with annual production value of nearly 100 billion yuan.

Last April, Cisco China Innovation Center was set up in Guangzhou International Innovation City and proposed to build China’s first smart city with smart manufacturing cloud industry as the core and annual production value of more than 100 billion yuan. Three months ago, Cisco invited its partners to come to Guangzhou again. The 2^nd group of Cisco’s partners including HAND Enterprise Solutions Co., Ltd. from Shanghai, Anjie from Tianjin, Mailtech and other seven enterprises signed agreements to settle down in Guangzhou.

Noteworthily, Eli Lilly and Company, Sanofi, Pfizer and other bio-medicine companies on the Fortune 500 list also expect to ignite cooperation with Guangzhou, which is indispensable with the rapid rise of Guangzhou’s bio-medicine industry. GE had set up a biological industrial park in Guangzhou. This month, BeiGene, an innovative bio-medicine enterprise of China with cooperation with GE, had a project settled down in Guangzhou. It planned to build a world-leading bio-medicine production base with direct investment estimated to 2.2 billion yuan and the construction will be started within this year.

Behind the cooperation between innovative multinationals and Guangzhou is the prosperity of Guangzhou’s industrial innovation. Hugo Shong, renowned investor and chairman of the board of IDG Ventures, said that he visited Guangzhou six times in 2016 while he only visited the city once a year before 2016. “Strategic emerging industries including new-round IT, artificial intelligence and bio-medicine have a robust development momentum. I come here to make project investigations,” said Hugo Shong. The phenomenal innovative company of Guangzhou might appear in the bio-medicine industry, he added.

Not only Fortune 500 enterprises but also famous international institutions visited Guangzhou delegation. The Paulson Institute, an independent institution founded and chaired by American Former Secretary of Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr., visited Guangzhou delegation to roll up cooperation with Guangzhou in green financing and carbon credit market transactions.

At the “Invest in China: New Challenges and Great Opportunities” closed-door round table of China Development Forum, Guangzhou became a buzzword of the participants. “During the past two years, Guangzhou brings me a clear recognition. That is the globalization is not being weakened but greatly strengthened,” said Li Tong, executive president of BOC International Holdings Limited. Li Tong thought that efforts should be made in “continuously enhancing reform and opening-up and improving internationalization level” to nurture Guangzhou’s traditional advantages as a millennial commercial capital and roll out the latest integration of global elements and resources.

As an important national central city, the 3^rd one on China’s urban economy list and the biggest engine of Guangdong, Guangzhou, relying on the hub-type network city construction, is forging itself into a strategic hub for international shipping, aviation and sci-tech innovation, amassing global development elements, improving ability in global resource distribution and striving to play a more important role in global city network. The strategic positioning of Guangzhou brings development space for quite a few Fortune 500 enterprises and renowned international institutions.

So far, nearly 300 Fortune 500 corporations have invested in around 800 projects in Guangzhou. In January and February, 366 foreign-funded enterprises was established in Guangzhou, increasing above 60% year on year. This further highlighted the investment value of Guangzhou in the world.

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, Mar. 21, 2017