BEIJING: Drawn by efforts to ensure that cross-border investments are profitable as well as safe amid global uncertainty, Agustin Pedroni, an Argentine who is president of Bridgestone (China) Investment, has been busy in recent months traveling across China to meet with clients and business partners.
The Japanese tire manufacturer plans to invest 562 million yuan ($78 million) in China over the next three years, focusing on building production bases and increasing the output of high-performance car tires.
Bridgestone’s decision to expand investment in China reflects the country’s consumption upgrade and the Chinese government’s ongoing efforts to promote high-level opening-up and enhance the efficiency of a unified national market, experts and officials said.
Addressing the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which concluded last month, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, highlighted the crucial role of reform and opening-up in different periods of China’s development. He said that on the new journey in the new era, the nation still needs to rely on reform and opening-up to create new prospects for Chinese modernization.
“Economic structural reform will remain our priority in further deepening reform comprehensively,” Xi said. “The main tasks in this regard include improving the systems and mechanisms for enabling high-quality development, fostering new growth drivers and strengths, upholding and fulfilling the commitments to the public and nonpublic sectors, building a unified national market, and refining the systems underpinning the market economy.” Pedroni, emphasizing China’s fast-growing, tech-intensive green industries, lucrative market potential and high-level openness to international engagement, said these factors will continue to boost confidence among multinational corporations.
As the plenum outlined China’s long-term road map, Li Yongjie, deputy international trade representative of the Ministry of Commerce, said that building a high-standard open economy is a key aspect of the reform-themed resolution adopted at the third plenary session.
Zhu Bing, director of the ministry’s department of foreign investment administration, said the government will ensure that foreign companies receive national treatment in areas such as access to resources, qualifications and licenses, setting of standards and government procurement, allowing them to share in the benefits of China’s opening-up measures.
Denis Depoux, global managing director at management consultancy Roland Berger, said that China aims to transform its vast market into a significant opportunity for the global community. Global companies’ confidence in China has continued to grow in the second quarter, with more than 40 percent of respondents in a survey expressing increasing confidence in the Chinese market, according to a report released in late July by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
