A total of 1,095 new foreign-funded enterprises were founded in Beijing between January and July 2024, a year-on-year increase of 19 percent. The surge has added new momentum and vitality to the city's high-quality development.

Favorable Policies Bring New Opportunity to Domestic and Foreign Investors

Beijing continues to lead the country in opening up the service sector. It is among the first group of cities approved to carry out the pilot program for expanding the opening-up of value-added telecommunications services, establish wholly foreign-owned hospitals, and permit foreign-funded enterprises to engage in the development and application of gene and stem cell therapy. These favorable policies bring new opportunities to domestic and foreign investors.

This year, Steinbeis, a world-renowned technology transfer organization, and Varian Medical Systems, a multinational company, established their headquarters in Beijing. The city welcomed the official launch of business operations of Standard Chartered Securities, China's first wholly foreign-owned securities company, and Mastercard NetsUnion, the country's second joint venture bank card clearing institution. A number of other landmark projects are also accelerating their landing in Beijing.

Accelerated Construction of a World-class Business Environment

The first-class business environment is one of the reasons enterprises are choosing to settle in Beijing. In recent years, a series of measures to expand the city's "circle of friends" have been introduced. Among them, the Regulation of Beijing Municipality on Foreign Investment is dedicated to better protecting the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors. The city is also fully advancing the construction of Beijing International Commercial Arbitration Center and the opening of the Beijing International Dispute Resolution Development Center. It has implemented the Global Service Partners program, awarding the title of "Global Service Partners of Beijing" to the first batch of 13 foreign-funded enterprises, including Morgan Stanley, and providing eight integrated services to partners, including access to high-level dialogue between government and enterprises. Finally, the city has held over 40 round-table meetings with foreign-funded enterprises, ensuring open channels for business leaders to communicate their requests and suggestions directly.

Two Zones Development to Drive Deeper Reform

In addition to creating a favorable business environment, Beijing is also promoting Two Zones development to drive deeper reform around investment, trade, talent, capital, and intellectual property.

Beijing has also introduced multiple facilitation policies, including pilot programs for cross-border financing, facilitation of payment with capital account income, foreign exchange settlement and sale for securities companies, and domestic and foreign currency cash pooling for multinational companies. Several policy measures have been introduced and implemented first in Beijing, such as the issuance and iteration of the Catalog of Recognized Overseas Professional Qualifications and the release of the first scenario-based, field-level negative list for cross-border data flows in the China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone. These efforts have played an important role in promoting economic and trade cooperation and facilitating personnel exchanges.

Next, Beijing will leverage the "Two Zones" development to steadily expand institutional opening up and undertake more innovative, integrated explorations that will help accumulate new experience for China to systematically establish a higher standard of open economy and inject new impetus into the capital's high-quality development.

(Source: The Beijing News)