Revitalizing the City through Opening up: 10 Years
- Details
- Category: Governmental News
- Published: Thursday, 28 February 2013 06:55
Since the initiation of the opening up drive of the country, Ningbo has seized the opportunity and set the development strategy of revitalizing the city through opening up, which has resulted in a rapid development of the economy. Especially since the convening of the 16th National Congress of the CPC, Ningbo's open economy has developed by leaps and bounds, in both scale and quality. It has become a strong impetus for the sustained, rapid and healthy development of Ningbo's economy and social undertakings.
During the past decade from 2002 to 2011, Ningbo has undergone tremendous changes, with the foreign trade volume decupled, increasing from a little over 10 billion U.S. dollars to nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars. The way of introducing foreign investment has also turned from wantonly attracting foreign investment to carefully selecting investors. High-tech projects and a number of Fortune 500 enterprises have settled in Ningbo, bringing in more than 22 billion US dollars of foreign investment, equaling 4.4 times to that of the previous 25 years. The annual Chinese investment overseas has also centuplicated, soaring from 120 million US dollars to 1.1 billion US dollars. Ningbo's industry of service outsourcing which started from scratch also leads the country, and it is striving to become a model city in the field. Moreover, Ningbo has strengthened its efforts to build its opening-up zones, and has become one of the few cities equipped with all types of special customs surveillance zones.
With its degree of openness ranking the sixth all over the nation, Ningbo has been credited as one of the top ten cities with the greatest investment value. It ranks the seventh in the top 100 cities with vigorous foreign trade industry, and its structural competitiveness the second. It can be said that the decade since the 16th National Congress of the CPC is the period seeing Ningbo's open economy make the fastest development, the biggest achievement and the strongest effect.
In retrospect to the decade long development, Ningbo's open economy mainly presents the following five characteristics:
1. Foreign trade structure optimized and international competitiveness strengthened
In the past decade, Ningbo's foreign trade has been developed mainly in the following four aspects: first, its total enterprises engaging in foreign trade are on the increase. In 2011, over 120,000 enterprises carried out foreign trade businesses, hiring over 2 million people, one fourth of Ningbo's total workforce. The per capita foreign trade volume in Ningbo was over 10,000 US dollars, exceeding that of Italy and Japan. More than 140 enterprises achieved an annual export volume of over 100 million US dollars. Second, the market is more diverse. Till now, Ningbo has had trade contacts with 221 countries and regions. It has successfully explored many emerging markets besides the steady increase of market share in some traditional markets such as the EU, the USA and Japan. In 2011, Ningbo exported 29.94 billion US dollars of commodities to emerging markets, accounting for 47.8 percent of the total. Especially in the recent five years, Ningbo's export to emerging markets increased at an annual rate of 19.2 percent, three percent higher than the average rate of the whole export volume, and 5.5 percent higher than the rate of the export to traditional markets. Enterprises doing businesses in emerging markets amounted to 9,619, a big increase compared to only 1,818 in 2002. Third, the quality of products is greatly improved. In 2011, the proportion of exports of mechanical and electrical goods stood at 55.6 percent, 8.6 percent higher than that of the year 2002. The proportion of the export of brand commodities increased to over 16 percent, and 20 brands have been credited as the key supported brands by the Ministry of Commerce, ranking the first among all the cities. Fourth, the trade patterns continue to improve. Ningbo's foreign trade industry is featured by its developed general trade. In 2011, the export and import of Ningbo's general trade were 78.6 percent and 68.1 percent respectively, 30.3 percent and 10.3 percent higher than the national average levels respectively. The import accounted for 38.45 percent, five percent higher than that of 2002. In the meantime, other trade patterns such as processing trade, service trade and entrepot trade have all achieved considerable progress.
2. FDI policies changing from attracting investors to selecting investors
While it endeavors to sustain its large scale in introducing foreign investment, Ningbo has carried out varied activities to improve the efficiency in attracting targeted investors. It has also improved its investment environment so as to attract good foreign-invested programs. The priority went to advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, with the aim to optimize foreign investment structure and enhance foreign funds' role in promoting economy's upgrading and transformation. In the past five years, the foreign investment in actual use was 12.38 billion US dollars, exceeding the total sum of the previous 25 years. In 2011, the foreign investment in the tertiary industry accounted for more than one third of the total, 15 percent higher than that of 2002. The averaged size of the foreign-funded projects continued to increase, with more than 90 percents of Ningbo's foreign investment coming from projects having a total investment of 10 million US dollars. While back in 2002, the average size of Ningbo's foreign-funded projects was only 4.81 million US dollars. In the past ten years, more than 50 projects of Fortune 500 companies were settled in Ningbo, two times more than that of the previous 25 years. Ningbo together with Hong Kong and Xiamen was rated as the top three cities with the greatest investment value.
3. Foreign investment and economic cooperation transformed successfully and the going global strategy made new progresses
For ten years, Ningbo's foreign investment and economic cooperation has made two major transformations: first is the transformation from centering on foreign labor service cooperation to focusing on overseas projects contracting at the beginning of the 11th Five-year Plan. The second transformation is from focusing on overseas projects contracting to paying attention to both foreign labor service cooperation and overseas projects contracting at the end of the 11th Five-year Plan. In 2011, Ningbo has newly invested 1.1 billion US dollars overseas, nearly 100 times more than that of 2002. The turnover of foreign contracted projects and labor service cooperation stood at 1.1 billion US dollars, six-folded the number of 2002 and increasing at an annual rate of 19 percent. Till 2011, Ningbo has invested in 1,428 overseas projects with a sum of 2.69 million US dollars, ranking in the front among all the vice-provincial cities. Ningbo's overseas investment goes to 91 destinations, mainly to Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and other Southeast Asian countries, and the USA, Germany and other European and American countries. The invested industries are also varied. In developing countries, the investment mainly goes to the manufacturing sector and the mineral resources exploration sector; while in developed countries, Ningbo companies mainly center on setting up marketing network and R&D institutes. Private companies have become the main body of Ningbo's going-global program, with their investment scales achieving record highs time and again. To name but a few examples, Junsheng Group has merged the Puri Cor., Ltd of Germany, and Evergreen Holding Group has also merged a Canadian resources company.
4. New fields are opened and outsourcing service grows rapidly
Ningbo began to vigorously develop outsourcing service in 2008. A developing plan for outsourcing service industry was made. Ningbo outsourcing service center and the outsourcing service institute were established. Favorable policies were offered and conducted for the development of the industry. Demonstration parks and provincial and municipal training bases were developed. Fundamental work was well done to introduce famous foreign and domestic outsourcing service enterprises, leading to a continuous and rapid growth of the industry. In 2011, the contract volume of Ningbo outsourcing service reached 8.564 billion Yuan ($1.361 billion) and the contract volume of the offshore outsourcing service $381 million, up by 31% and 40.1% respectively. The execution volume of the outsourcing service was 6.088 billion Yuan and that of the offshore outsourcing service $280 million. Till the end of 2011, there have been 608 outsourcing service enterprises in Ningbo with 25,700 people working in them. More than 60% of Ningbo total business volume of outsourcing service and offshore business volume comes from the four demonstration parks of the high-tech zone, Yinzhou District, Beilun district and the Jiangdong District. Big outsourcing service projects by India Tata, Huawei, IBM, Disney, Insigma and Global Data Solutions Limited entered Ningbo, making Ningbo qualified for becoming the national demonstration city of the outsourcing service
5. Development zones developing and playing a leading role
Since 2002, Ningbo Export Processing Zone, Ningbo Free Trade Logistics Zone, Export Processing Zone, Cixi Zhejiang, China National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, Ningbo Meishan Free Trade Port, Ningbo Lishe Bonded Logistics Center, and Ningbo Petroleum Economic and Technological Development Zone have been approved by the State Council. And until now, Ningbo has ten national development zones, becoming one of the cities that have all kinds of special areas supervised by the Customs. And Ningbo has opened eleven provincial and municipal development zones, which, depending on advantages of location, functions and industry bases, have become leaders in the opening and development of Ningbo and in attracting foreign capital, optimizing industrial structure, innovating technology and system. At present, the utilized foreign capital by the development zones takes up half of the total foreign investment in Ningbo, the imported and exported volume of the zones 60% of the total volume, the annual industrial value and added value about 60% of the total value, and profit and tax about 80% of the total contributed by enterprises above designated size.
6. Investment by the World Top 500
Introducing the World Top 500, the world's industry leaders which represent the highest level of the world economic development, help to promote the industrial development in one city. Ningbo in recent years has been paying great attention in introducing the World Top 500 that select its investment destinations carefully. It has achieved a lot. In the past ten years, more than 50 projects have been invested by the World Top 500 and till the end of last year, 87 projects in advanced manufacturing, commercial service, real estate and modern agriculture have been started in Ningbo.
Ningbo succeeded in hosting the Dialogue between Chinese Private Enterprises and the World Top 500 because Ningbo private enterprises are open, active and cover a wide range of business. We are considering the following two things. The first is to promote the connection between the most excellent global economic resources and Ningbo economy. The World Top 500 enjoy such resources and have great interest in China's vast domestic market and convenient investment environment. Ningbo's private enterprises are during a critical period of transformation and upgrading. There is great foundation and bright future to promote the cooperation, resources-sharing and mutual development between the two. The second is to promote the cooperation between the advantageous industries of the World Top 500 and key industries in Ningbo. Dialogues held in Ningbo specialize in particular fields to promote their development. The Dialogue of last year and this year focused on automobiles and spare parts and attracted many automobile enterprises of Ningbo.
