Confidence of foreign firms in China growing as supply chain recovers

Foreign-invested companies in China are rapidly regaining confidence as normal production and operation resumes and order fulfillment keeps improving amid a steadily recovering supply chain, the top economic planner said on March 17.

"Judging by the current situation, we believe there is no severe problem of pullouts," said Wu Hongliang, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission, when answering a question regarding the exit of foreign firms during an online news conference.

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak, foreign firms faced similar difficulties such as disrupted logistics and understaffing of Chinese companies to receiving and delivering orders, and some order transfers occurred, he said.

As China's work and production resumption accelerates amid further containment of the disease, the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain is gradually linked up again, and foreign firms are more and more confident in their businesses here, Wu said.

"We believe the fundamentals of foreign investment in China are stable," he said, noting that the overall advantages of China's industrial chain have not changed despite the outbreak.

The country has a strong domestic market and is the world's largest market in many fields, such as automobiles, electronics, machine tools and clothing, which is highly valued by the majority of foreign-funded enterprises, Wu said.

China also has the largest industrial system in the world with the most complete categories and complete supporting facilities, enabling the rapid transformation from product research and development to scale production and high-frequency and flexible product upgrading, both of which are also highly valued by foreign-funded enterprises, he said.

"The foreign firms have reiterated their fundamental development strategy of 'In China, For China,'" Wu said.

The commission will continue to address the difficulties of foreign firms in resuming work and production, so as to help them reach full capacity as soon as possible, he said, adding that the country will continue to shorten the negative list for market access and step up efforts in advancing major foreign-invested projects.

"We are fully confident that the growing dividends of China's opening-up will see more confidence of foreign companies in their long-term development in China and maintain the stability of the industrial chain," Wu said.