Representatives from more than 20 foreign-funded companies participated in a symposium on Aug 22 – in an event that covered a raft of key industries and cutting-edge fields in the Lin-gang Special Area, located in East China's Shanghai city.
In terms of its further opening up, developing their offshore businesses, improving the local commercial ecosystem and building a tax system with international competitiveness, the enterprises were interested to learn about what actions Lin-gang planned to undertake next.
Representatives – including those from Tesla, SAP, Cummins, Novo Nordisk and global financial advisers PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC – participated in the symposium.
At the event, representatives from nine foreign-funded groups discussed the Lin-gang Special Area's investment and trade elasticity, systems openings and innovation, its effective business environment, key business layout and future development strategies, among other subjects.
In the process, they shared their experiences related to common growth with Lin-gang, exploring its blueprint for the development of resident companies and actively providing advice and suggestions.
Tang Ciming, a partner in PwC's business consulting unit, urged the special area to establish an internationally competitive tax system and form a fiscal and tax network that was in sync with its functional areas.
"For example, we study and expand the scope of applications of enterprise income-tax incentives in key areas. In addition to Lin-gang's four major industries, we can implement 15-25 percent in tax incentives for high-end equipment and other industries," Tang said.
"At the same time, we focus on high-end service industries such as cross-border finance and offshore trade and shipping services and implement special tax policies for them."
Tang added that the 15 percent enterprise income tax policy for the four key industries – integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, biomedicines and civil aviation – was the tax policy with the highest social awareness implemented in Lin-gang.
To date, 132 enterprises have passed the qualification-certification process, with an aggregate tax reduction amount of 1.2 billion yuan ($170 million). This policy has effectively promoted the attraction of dynamic frontier industries to the special area.
In addition, Tang expressed the hope that Lin-gang would serve as a platform and test field for China to participate in the formulation of international economic and trade rules and participate in the formulation of international economic and trade rules in specific fields, such as in AI and global digital governance.
Currently, there are more than 2,600 foreign-funded enterprises in Lin-gang with an aggregate foreign capital of nearly $3 billion. In the first half of the year, a total of $1.2 billion in investment was put in place there, a year-on-year increase of 263 percent – demonstrating the confidence and determination of these businesses to continue to invest in the special area.