Changsha roars ahead with major projects

City pulls out all the stops for investors, both in China and abroad

The construction site of a national rice molecular breeding center in Furong district, Changsha city, is bustling with workers installing its special curtain walls and decorating its interior.

Thanks to an investment of 1.1 billion yuan ($158.13 million) by Huazhi Rice Bio-Tech, when complete the center will integrate services for seed quality testing, biological breeding gene chip analysis and bioinformatics software development.

The center is just the tip of an iceberg in Changsha's ongoing efforts to promote the development of large, major projects.

A particular highlight of key industrial projects in Hunan province, and Changsha as the provincial capital has achieved fruitful results during the process, according to officials.

The city government set an ambitious goal for 2018 at the start of the year, planning to attract 1,050 major projects, with a total investment of 315.6 billion yuan.

By the end of September, about 270.9 billion yuan of funding was in place, accounting for 85.8 percent of the total planned investment for the year.

Despite being a landlocked city, Changsha has been noticed by an increasing number of investors from both home and abroad.

Statistics from the city's commerce bureau showed that Changsha set a new high in the amount of business from new large Chinese and foreign projects during the January to September period, signing off on 135 project contracts, each with an investment of more than 200 million yuan.

In May, for instance, the China headquarters of the Zurbruggen Group started construction in the city's Xiangjiang New Area.

It is the first city commercial complex the century-old German company has established in China so far.

Christian Zurbruggen, president of the group, said Changsha is a city full of economic vitality and located the China headquarters there because of its industrial strengths and huge potential for future development.

"Changsha will further improve its business environment and government services to attract more entrepreneurs," said Hu Zhongxiong, the city mayor.

The city's index of business environment now ranks 10th in China, jumping two places from last year, according to a report released earlier this month by PricewaterhouseCoopers China, Business Big Data, Caixin Insight and the Chengdu Institution of New Economic Development.

Its business-related government approval procedures have also been streamlined to better serve companies and individual businessmen. On March 1, an integrated service hall for project investments and construction started trial operations, combining under one roof 69 approval items from 16 government sectors.

In addition, business applicants in all the provincial and national industrial parks in Changsha can now go to one service window to handle all their required documents.

These reforms have benefited many investors and strengthened their confidence, officials said.

Flex Changsha Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park, for example, spent only 78 days running from a contract signing to a groundbreaking ceremony. Costing 5 billion yuan, contract of the park was signed on January 29 between the Changsha government and electronic manufacturing service provider Flextronics International, a Fortune Global 500 company.

The park rolled out its first batch of projects in July and is currently in the second phase of its construction.

Convenient transportation in Changsha is also helping to add to its appeal as an investment magnet, according to the city government.

It says Changsha serves as a pivot city for the Belt and Road Initiative and a center for urban agglomeration in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.