Not just a big market but an innovation source

PPG, one of the world's largest suppliers of paints, coatings and specialty materials, launched its global power battery fire protection coatings production line at a Wuhu plant in Anhui province in June. The annual production capacity of the plant is expected to reach 20,000 metric tons by this year-end, including 1,100 tons of fire protection coatings for power batteries.

Raymond Siu, chief financial officer and interim president of the US-based company's arm in the Asia-Pacific region, said: "As the world's largest manufacturer, China continues to lead with the most comprehensive and resilient supply chain system, and offers foreign investors huge growth opportunity as the second-largest consumer market.

"The more multinationals know about and integrate their operations into the economy of China, the more confidence they will have in China's long-term growth and prosperity."

In 2021, PPG started building a global innovation center in Tianjin to focus on technology development and innovation not only for the China market but for the Asia-Pacific and other regions around the globe where PPG has operations.

With a total investment of $80 million, the facility in Tianjin is the only innovation center outside of PPG's global headquarters and is expected to be operational in 2023.

The company is also setting up its Battery Pack Application Center in China focusing on electric vehicle battery technology innovation.

According to Zhang Yansheng, chief researcher at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, China must propel high-quality development and make more efforts in developing high-tech manufacturing and services sectors, to boost FDI inflows.

"As China pursues economic transformation and industrial and supply chain upgrades, it will remain attractive to foreign investments," Zhang said.

Wang with the China Minsheng Bank Research Institute also said foreign investors are keen to tap the opportunities arising from China's economic transformation and upgrades, which is reflected in their increasing enthusiasm for investing in China's high-tech and modern services sectors.

Official data showed actual use of foreign capital in the services sector surged 10 percent year-on-year in the first seven months to 598.92 billion yuan, accounting for around 75 percent of the total FDI inflows.

The FDI growth rates for high-tech industry, high-tech manufacturing and high-tech services came in at 32.1 percent, 33 percent and 31.8 percent, respectively, much higher than the overall FDI growth.

Wang Lei, global executive vice-president of AstraZeneca and president of international business and China operations, said an increasing number of multinational companies are seeing China as an important innovation source and manufacturing base instead of seeing the nation only as a major market.

"Building global research and development centers, innovation facilities and industrial parks in China has become a new trend among multinational pharmaceutical companies," he said.

For instance, AstraZeneca has formed cooperation arrangements with partners, including the Wuxi high-tech industrial development zone, to build the MCampus in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, an industrial park focused on developing solutions to metabolic diseases.

Serving as an open ecosystem for clinical and industrial integration, the MCampus aims to help Wuxi city to upgrade its healthcare industry and create a life science innovation cluster with metabolic disease diagnosis and treatment at its core.

In the next five years, the MCampus plans to bring in and nurture 50 companies, recruit 500 high-end professionals from different fields, launch 50 products, generate product sales of 2.5 billion yuan, and have five new companies listed on stock exchanges.

liuzhihua@chinadaily.com.cn