Since the beginning of 2017, Nanjing has attracted a bunch of large projects to make a good start in the city’s business investment. 120 new projects with a total investment of 271.6 billion RMB were kicked off in Nanjing in the beginning of this year, and the investment was injected into a wide range of industries, focusing mainly on manufacture sector. With new rivals sprouting out every single day, Nanjing ranks first among all the cities in Jiangsu province in terms of investment volume, and has stood out with its abundant resources. Therefore, the enormous investments coming one after another reflect the fact that Nanjing is becoming much more valued by business owners.
Business Investments in Nanjing in 2017
On January 18th, Tsinghua Unigroup Co., Ltd. and Nanjing municipal government signed an agreement to together build a semiconductor industry base in Nanjing. The domestic semiconductor giant finally chose Jiangbei New Area of Nanjing as the base for its further development, facilitating the gathering and upgrading of the Integrated Circuits industry in Nanjing.
On the morning of January 19th, a tripartite agreement between SAIC Motor, NAC and Jiangning Hi-Tech Industrial Park on setting up SAIC-Nanjing Jiangning commercial vehicle production base was officially signed. SAIC is planning to build a new factory in Jiangning Area to manufacture multi-functional models.
On the afternoon of the same day, a group of leaders from Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Google and other top international companies announced that, after careful consideration, they finally decided to build the manufacturing plant of their innovation company FMC in Nanjing to develop high-end smart electric vehicles. The total investment of the project is 11.64 billion yuan.
On January 20th Ford Motor Research & Engineering (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. released its expansion statement. With the completion of its third Research & Engineering Building, nearly a thousand employees will be recruited, crowning Nanjing as "one of Ford's six major sources of global product and technology development".
The Reasons Why Nanjing is Chosen as the Primary City for New Investment
Why is Nanjing chosen as the primary city for the new investment? Here are some answers from the investors.
Dai Lei, Chief Operating Officer of FMC, noted that, the construction of high-end smart electric vehicles plant requires a complete supply chain of auto parts, as well as the support from innovative enterprises specialized in car internet, driverless technology, artificial intelligence and other related frontiers. In recent years, Nanjing has been experiencing industrial transformation from traditional manufacturing to innovative manufacturing, and that’s precisely why we preferred Nanjing.
While Ford's Global Vice President Xiao Dawei explained the reasons to locate the Research and Engineering Center in Nanjing, he also said, “Ten years ago, we had only about 100 research staffs in Nanjing, and now the number of employees has increased to more than 2,100. What’s more, we’ve established strategic cooperation with prominent universities such as Nanjing University and Southeast University. I feel so proud of all the achievements.”
The change of the ratings of the most attractive cities for foreign investors also demonstrates the rapid development of Nanjing in the past few years. Before 2010, Nanjing had maintained the fourth place in terms of attracting foreign investment for many years. However, the situation has been changing since 2010; last year the actual foreign investment in Nanjing reached 3.48 billion US dollars with an increase of 4.3%, which allows Nanjing to take the second place among all the cities in Jiangsu province.
According to the analysis by Municipal Bureau of Commerce, the fact that Nanjing has become an important investment city could be interpreted as the results of the policy to optimize the business environment and improve service level, and it’s closely related to the city’s unique resources. As China is going through economic restructuring and upgrading, the processing trade begins to slow down, but instead the innovative economy starts to occupy the market. Consequently, Nanjing outpaced other cities in the new round of industrial competition due to its advanced science, education resources, industrial foundation, geographical conditions and cultural heritage, etc. Nanjing has eventually found the right way to develop its economy, namely attracting the most robust high-end industries to boost the local market.