Foreign firms expand investment in nation

A view of the booth of Zeiss Group during an expo in Shanghai. Despite global foreign direct investment exhibiting a contraction trend in 2023 due to factors such as sluggish economic growth and geopolitical tensions, China's inbound investment flow remained relatively high in the past decade, said a report released on Wednesday. In the first half of 2024, multinational companies continued to increase their investment in China and optimize their industrial strategies, with nearly 27,000 new foreign-funded enterprises registered in China, a year-on-year growth of 14.2 percent, according to the report, titled "Multinationals in China: Sharing New Opportunities of Chinese Modernization". "The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed a number of high-level measures for further opening up to the outside world and important initiatives to build new high-quality productive forces, further strengthening our confidence and determination to deeply cultivate China for long-term development," Leon Wang, executive vice-president of AstraZeneca, said at the summit. "The center will support the development of all our brands and categories in China and strengthen capabilities to drive competitive advantage and honorable differentiation," said Arjun Purkayastha, senior vice-president and managing director of Reckitt China, adding that it will test new products in China first and later market them to the rest of the world.