Shanghai last week recognized 30 regional headquarters of multinational enterprises (MNCs) and 10 others as research and development (R&D) centers at a ceremony attended by Mayor Gong Zheng. Among those receiving the certificates were five Global Fortune 500 enterprises – Amgen Biomedical, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo from the United States, Swiss company ABBGroup, and Sony from Japan. The total number of headquarters and R&D hubs in the city rose to 791 and 488, respectively, both of which rank first nationwide. More foreign-funded enterprises have settled in Shanghai, while the contract value and actual use of foreign capital both rose in the January-April period. Actually used foreign capital reached USD7.773 billion in the first four months, an increase of 20.3% year-on-year and up 25.2% compared with the same pe?riod in 2019.
ABB Robotics began to promote industrial robot applications in the Chinese market in 1994, and has carried out R&D and production work in China since 2005, making it the first multi?national industrial robot company to conduct local R&D and manufacturing in China. “Our new plant in the Kangqiao area of the Pudong New Area, with a total investment of USD150 million, will begin operating in the first quarter of 2022, when our global R&D center will move in and expand in scale,” said Liang Rui, Vice President of the group. It will be ABB’s largest R&D center in the world in terms of personnel, investment and scale, Liang said. PepsiCo, one of the first foreign companies to enter China, and its business partners have invested more than CNY53 billion in China over the past 10 years. It is now seeking new development in digitalization and automatization, and has built strategic partnerships with several e?commerce platforms.
According to the Municipal Commission of Commerce, the latest batch of enterprises are mostly well-known industry pioneers, such as Saudi Arabian chemicals firm SABIC, and ASML from the Netherlands, which manufactures photolithography systems which are key to the semiconductor industry. “The strategic position of Shang?hai is key to our group’s development,” said Song Wangqiu, President for the Asia-Pacific region at Metsa Group, a Finnish forest industry group that has chosen Shanghai as its APAC headquarters. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for a fifth of Metsa’s revenue. Liang Rui, Vice President and Director of the Robotics Division in China of Swiss industrial conglomerate ABB, said: “We have been optimistic about the market since we first entered China in 1994. We are actually among the very first foreign companies to introduce both R&D and manufacturing to China. The government policies have always been favorable across all levels. They are particularly helpful in cut?ting red tape and expediting our process to operate locally and smoothly.”
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in actual use in the Chinese mainland rose 39.9% on a yearly basis to CNY302.47 billion in the first quarter, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM). The volume surpassed the pre-COVID level, rising 24.8% from the same period in 2019, the Shanghai Daily and China Daily report.
