Riding on the wind of the Yangtze River Delta integration, the strength of the business environment to create the momentum of industrial agglomeration

Editor's Note:

On the map of China, there is a place both with the East and West, connected to the South and North of the unique geographic location, but also in the "Belt and Road" and the Yangtze River Economic Belt intersection, although located in the hinterland of East China is a landlocked province, but the river near the sea, the opening up of economic development is increasingly booming. It is Anhui. Recently, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) with more than 20 foreign-funded enterprises into Anhui, the organization of docking exchanges, to carry out cooperation talks, in seeking investment opportunities at the same time, witnessed how this place to ride the wind of integration of the Yangtze River Delta, and continue to optimize the construction of the business environment, and promote the development of industrial agglomeration for the construction of a new inland high ground for an open economy to give a "Anhui" beauty! Answer sheet.

Unique Location Advantage Brings Open Opportunities

Walking into the assembly workshop of Azalea Auto, you can't see many workers in the large site, only to see rows and rows of machines running in a well-ordered manner, and the whole workshop has realized highly automated and intelligent operation. The work area outside the yellow landmark line, mechanical arms will be interior, tires, doors and other types of accessories automatically assembled to the frame; look up, a new car is moving through the air corridor autonomous position; visit the way, back and forth shuttle transport all kinds of materials unmanned handling car, once the perception of someone in front of the stop to avoid, and so that people are completely through the front immediately after the self.

This workshop is just a small part of Azera's business layout in Anhui. Since 2020, when the company's China headquarters was established in Hefei, it has established or relocated a number of core business units, including research and development, sales and service, key component R&D and manufacturing, and automated driving. Speaking of the reasons for choosing this location, Azalea's responsible person admitted that Anhui's unique location in the Yangtze River Delta is an important factor for the company to settle here.

"Yangtze River Delta integration" can be said to be the key word in the process of opening up and development in Anhui Province in recent years.In November 2018, support for the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta region was upgraded to a national strategy; in December 2019, the "Outline of the Plan for the Integrated Development of the Yangtze River Delta Region" was issued and published, and the scope of the plan includes Shanghai, Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province, and the entire territory of Anhui Province. Since then, the inland province of Anhui caught the Yangtze River Delta integration "express train", and Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, three coastal provinces and cities on the road hand in hand, ushering in multiple opportunities for opening up.

As the inland gradually have the original coastal areas only have the industrial base, and coastal areas of various types of costs are constantly high, the development of foreign-funded enterprises in recent years has shown a new trend from the coast to migrate inland. In this context, Anhui as the Yangtze River Delta region, the only inland province, is becoming the key zone of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang open resource migration.

"Anhui has obvious location advantages and is the main area for the transfer of enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta." Anhui Edscha Auto Parts Co., Ltd. said in an interview with the reporter, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Edscha (Edscha) Group in China, the enterprise chose to invest in Anhui, in terms of purchasing costs, logistics costs, labor costs and other aspects of cost-effective.

Secondly, the advantages of geographic proximity, convenient transportation, interconnected infrastructure, common rules and regulations, and deepened supply chain cooperation also make Anhui the best receiving area for foreign investment spillover from other regions in the Yangtze River Delta.

Tesla's layout in Shanghai and Anhui is a good example. on September 6, the 2 millionth vehicle of Tesla's Shanghai Mega Factory slowly drove out of the workshop. Remembering that it took 33 months for the factory to accomplish the target of the first 1 million vehicles, it took less than 13 months to go from 1 million to 2 million vehicles. The first directly-managed sheet metal spraying center in Anhui Province was officially put into use on September 9, when the Hefei Shushan Hi-Tech Tesla Center was opened. This center integrates sales, after-sales and sheet metal spraying services, providing vehicle owners with vehicle full life cycle services.

"We attach great importance to the Anhui market. As early as 2020, Tesla set up a company in Hefei to carry out vehicle sales delivery and after-sales business." Tesla's business in Anhui has been growing rapidly in recent years, especially in the new energy automobile aftermarket area, and Hefei now has all of Tesla's sales business segments, said a Tesla corporate representative during the foreign-funded enterprise's Anhui tour.

Shanghai and Anhui, the former as a "leader" to lead the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, the latter is in a period of accumulation and development, a promising period of growth and critical period. Tesla's comprehensive upgrading of its service map in Anhui is a reflection of the "east wind" of Yangtze River Delta integration and the economic radiation of the international metropolis in Anhui.

In addition, the key regional market represented by the Yangtze River Delta region is the main component of the national unified market, with a larger number of international resource elements and freer flow, thus bringing more opening dividends to the region.

Data show that in the first half of this year, the actual use of foreign capital in three provinces and one city in the Yangtze River Delta region amounted to 45.5 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for more than 40% of the national share. Among them, the actual use of foreign investment in Anhui 1.19 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 33.8%; the province's manufacturing industry, high-tech industry, the actual use of foreign investment year-on-year growth reached about 68%. Although the scale of foreign investment in Anhui accounted for less, but the growth rate is at the forefront, visible in its very open development potential.

The reporter understands that in the first half of this year, many foreign enterprises continue to settle in Hefei or capital increase, such as Volkswagen Group (China) wholly-owned holding company of science and technology projects settled in Hefei Economic and Technological Development Zone, will become the group's largest science and technology and innovation centers in China, Germany's Continental Group has announced the construction of the fourth phase of investment in Hefei project. It can be found that Anhui is grasping the opportunity of "integration", take the initiative to participate in the Yangtze River Delta industrial division of labor, in promoting the cross-regional industrial chain supply chain integration and open economy on the road, the smoother and stronger.

Quality business environment boosts foreign investment confidence

Whether the entry threshold is high or not affects whether foreign investment comes in, while whether the business environment is excellent or not determines whether foreign investment is willing to come. In order to steadily expand the opening up, so that foreign-invested enterprises are willing to come, stay and develop well, it is necessary to continue to optimize the business environment, and provide quality soil for foreign enterprises to cultivate the local market. The fact that CCPIT and Anhui Provincial People's Government are jointly hosting a series of activities for foreign-invested enterprises in Anhui is proof that both the state and Anhui Province attach importance to the introduction of foreign investment and are committed to optimizing the business environment.

At the government-enterprise exchange meeting, representatives of foreign-funded enterprises actively expressed their views on their development in Anhui, while the heads of provincial departments and 16 municipalities in Anhui province came face-to-face to understand the development situation of the enterprises, listened to their demands and suggestions, and answered their questions and puzzles.

"We are very optimistic about China's talent, technology and market." Cui Fuqiu, General Manager of Softbank Group China, said that Hefei is a very good entrepreneurial base with strong scientific research capabilities. It is hoped that governments across Anhui will recommend outstanding startups to Softbank, thus helping local Anhui companies achieve better development in China or internationally.

Mr. Du Yingjie, General Manager of Public Affairs and Policy, Greater China, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) talked about the fact that IHG has opened 658 hotels in China, 15 of which are in Anhui. He believes that this number does not match the economic volume and tourism resources of Anhui Province, InterContinental Hotels has great potential for future development in Anhui, and suggests that localities should introduce relevant policies and initiatives, launch more leisure and vacation, business tourism products as well as promotional fee activities, and promote the balanced and internationalized development of the culture, tourism and hotel industry in the region.

Li Xiaokun, head of public policy and government affairs of Coca-Cola Beverages (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. introduced that China is now the third largest market for Coca-Cola globally, and Coca-Cola's cumulative investment in China has exceeded 13 billion U.S. dollars, which has led to 490,000 job opportunities in China, with 99% of the employees working locally and 98% of the raw materials procured in China. In Anhui province, Coca-Cola has 84 branches, and since it built a factory in Hefei in 1995, the company now has 10 production lines. Li Xiaokun said the company invested in new production lines in Hefei last year and wanted to find out what incentives were available to facilitate the expansion of its plants.

"We are the first foreign-funded retailer to settle in Luyang district." Pang Shixuan, senior manager of public affairs at IKEA (China) Investment Co Ltd, said China is currently the only market other than the Swedish headquarters where the complete IKEA industrial chain is laid out, involving product development, testing, production, sourcing, warehousing as well as various areas such as distribution, retailing, shopping centers and digital innovation. IKEA's relationship with Anhui began in 2014, and after years of investigation, contact and other efforts, as well as the support of the local government departments in Anhui, the project was successfully completed and opened during the epidemic, and we look forward to more in-depth development and cooperation between IKEA and Anhui in the future.

Corning, an internationally recognized company in the field of materials science, has four companies in Anhui, three of which are in Hefei. In the view of Chen Yumeng, government affairs manager of Corning (Shanghai) Management Co., Ltd, Hefei is already one of the largest high-end manufacturing bases of Corning in the world. Although the global economic development has a certain degree of uncertainty since the beginning of this year, Corning still maintains an optimistic attitude towards the development of the market.

The head essential oil enterprise Dottore has set up branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other 11 cities in China, this time to participate in the foreign enterprises in Anhui, ready to find opportunities for cooperation in Anhui. Lu Xiaohua, external affairs manager of Doterra (Shanghai) Trading Co., Ltd. said that Anhui is rich in plant resources, and hoped that Doterra could have some cooperation with Anhui in the procurement of agricultural products and raw materials.

In response to the problems pointed out by the representatives of foreign enterprises, the suggestions made and the demands expressed, the heads of government departments at all levels in Anhui have responded on the spot. "There is no best business environment, only better." The vice governor of the People's Government of Anhui Province pointed out that foreign investment is an important element in promoting high-level opening up, and foreign enterprises are valuable resources that Anhui values and treasures. Anhui will continue to increase the construction of market-oriented, rule of law, international first-class business environment, constantly optimize foreign investment policies and initiatives, promote the demand of foreign-funded enterprises and the depth of the coupling of the government service supply, to create a good ecology that everyone is a business environment, and always talk about the business environment, so that foreign-funded entrepreneurs and friends to feel at ease to invest in Anhui.

Strengthening scientific and technological innovation to lead industrial agglomeration

On the way to the inspection of the company, nearly reached the end, "China's sound valley" four big words appear in the roadside buildings, a "sound" about the show is about to start.

"I'm Xiaoyan, the virtual anchor of Xunfei AI, and I can realize real-time broadcasting in many languages. ......" As soon as I walked into the Xunfei AI Experience Hall, a cool real-life "anchorwoman" wearing a pink suit began to speak in Mandarin, and the "anchorwoman" began to speak in Mandarin, and the "anchorwoman" began to speak in Mandarin. "will begin to use Mandarin, English, Russian, Japanese, Korean, French and other languages to express welcome. According to the staff, the use of voice synthesis technology, so that the robot can speak. On the other side of the experience hall, with the lecturer's explanation, the screen automatically recognizes and displays what she said, and translates it in real time into various languages such as French, Arabic, Spanish and German.

The first second is still feeling the magic of voice recognition and instant translation technology, the next second is a small flexible running industrial inspection robot attracted attention. According to reports, this "smart" intelligent inspection robot relies on the optimized spiral array technology and sound source positioning algorithm technology of KDDI, which can complete the intelligent inspection of gas leakage, partial discharge, mechanical rattles and other issues. In addition, the application scenarios of AI+ automobile, AI+ industry, AI+ education, AI+ justice, AI+ medical and other intelligent technologies in various fields were also displayed. At this time, those present felt that the vigor of science and technology innovation in Anhui Province continues to flourish and spread in this small experience hall.

"Science and technology innovation is the driving force and source of sustainable development of enterprises, and the 'science' in 'science' gas is the most distinctive urban temperament of Hefei." Zhao Ming, vice mayor of Hefei Municipal People's Government, said in the foreign-funded enterprises in Anhui that Hefei is a city of emerging industries, strong innovation vitality, and in recent years, closely follow the new round of scientific and technological revolution, to create a "core screen and automobile", "anxious to lifetime wisdom" of the brand-new industrial pattern. The pattern.

It is understood that the "core" refers to the integrated circuit industry, long Xin, crystal and other 38 integrated circuit enterprises have settled in Hefei; "screen" refers to the new display industry, Hefei has been developed for the new display industry cluster, with BOE, VISION and a number of other leading enterprises; "steam" refers to the new display industry, Hefei has developed for the new display industry cluster, with BOE, VISION and other Vapor" represents new energy vehicles and intelligent networked vehicles, six new energy companies such as Azure, Volkswagen, BYD, JAC, etc. have come to Hefei, bringing together more than 500 upstream and downstream enterprises in the industry chain, forming a complete industrial ecology; "Hop" is the name of the industry. Artificial intelligence and manufacturing, information technology and manufacturing industries formed by the fusion. At the same time, "emergency" is the urban emergency security industry; "end" is the intelligent terminal industry; "life" is the biomedical and big health industry; and "wisdom" is the artificial intelligence industry. "for the artificial intelligence industry. It can be seen that science and technology innovation is accelerating in Hefei to lead the clustering of characteristic industries.

For the rapid rise of the city of industry Wuhu, it is through the creation of information artery to pull the industrial agglomeration. Wuhu municipal government responsible person said, Wuhu is China's "East counts West counts" project layout of eight computing hub nodes and ten data center cluster, is accelerating to create a national computing center city and computing center. Up to now, Huawei cloud 12 key projects have settled in Wuhu, in the construction of the base frame will exceed 100,000 this year.

"Bofeng has invested about RMB 1 billion in Anhui, including 100 MW of centralized power supply as well as more than 20 distributed photovoltaic projects, and a new centralized wind power project has landed in Suzhou this year." Mr. Zhu Ning, Vice President of Bofeng Group China, said that Anhui's accelerated cultivation and development of strategic emerging industries has a strong fit with Bofeng's business. In the future, Bofeng will seek more investment opportunities in Anhui, including wind, light, energy storage, transformation of carbon-intensive industries, green and low-carbon technologies and services, etc., so as to provide assistance for the industry chain decarbonization process.

Gathering the power of trade promotion to provide solid assistance

From the Foreign Enterprises Local Tour in Tianjin to Sichuan to Anhui, CCPIT has always firmly grasped the fundamental of serving enterprises and provided precise services for foreign enterprises in a targeted manner. Through the series of activities, it has not only publicized the local business environment and enhanced the investment confidence of foreign enterprises, but also set up economic and trade platforms, promoted exchanges and cooperation, and opened up channels for reflecting problems and responding to the demands of foreign investors face-to-face. At the same time, through the field visit docking, contributed to a lot of cooperation intentions. The local activities of foreign-funded enterprises are the best testimony of CCPIT to give full play to the functions of connecting government and enterprises, integrating internal and external affairs, unimpeded supply and demand, as well as weaving a dense network of service enterprises and expanding the circle of international friends.

The national trade promotion system is a chess game, and the good results achieved by the working group of serving foreign-funded enterprises cannot be separated from the efforts of the local trade promotion system. According to Zheng Dongtao, secretary of the party group and director of Anhui Council for the Promotion of International Trade, up to now, the Anhui Council for the Promotion of International Trade has collected and sorted out the feedback from 172 foreign-funded enterprises in the province on 252 problems and 101 suggestions, involving logistics, tariffs, environmental protection, operating costs, introduction of talents and policy fulfillment, etc., and has now solved 90% of common and individualized problems, effectively enhancing foreign-funded enterprises' competitiveness and improving their competitiveness. 90% of the common and individualized problems have been solved, which effectively enhanced the confidence of foreign enterprises to invest and expand production in Anhui.

In addition, focusing on key areas, key enterprises and key issues, the task force divided into two large research groups, centered on four research themes, in-depth investigation and research. The research team has visited more than ten overseas business associations in China, letter grid inquiry nearly ten provincial trade promotion agencies, in-depth understanding of the situation of more than 90 foreign-funded foreign trade enterprises in the province's eight cities, in the discovery of the problem at the same time put forward the corresponding countermeasures, but also to promote the introduction of relevant policy documents.

Zheng Dongtao pointed out that, combined with the demand direct reporting platform data and the results of the preliminary research, foreign-funded enterprises in Anhui mainly have three aspects of the common demand: First, the global economic and trade information service needs are particularly urgent; Second, the demand for international commercial legal services has increased markedly; Third, to participate in the high-quality international economic and trade exchanges platform with a strong intention.

He said that in the future, Anhui Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) will play a good role as a bridge and support local governments to carry out the work of "Double Recruitment and Double Attraction", and make efforts to help enterprises to talk about cooperation and grab orders. At the same time, it will also speed up the strategic layout of foreign-related rule of law work, build an all-chain one-stop public legal service system, safeguard the rights and interests of enterprises; make good use of the three local industrial and commercial cooperation mechanisms of China-Germany, China-Poland and China-Japan, and the platforms of 23 overseas liaison offices of the provincial International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), as well as make good use of the cooperation agreements signed with more than 110 business associations around the globe, and carry out "civil society" exchanges and international liaison. It has also made good use of the cooperation agreements signed with more than 110 business associations around the world to carry out "civil society" exchanges and international liaison, and endeavored to build a high-quality international economic and trade exchange platform for enterprises.

Editor: Ge Yan