General

New trends in international trade! In 2022, China's actual use of foreign capital exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan for the first time, hitting a new record. At the same time, the development of the digital economy has also achieved remarkable results. According to the data released at the 2022 Global Digital Economy Conference, China's digital economy has ranked second in the world for many years in a row.

Experts said that with the continuous development of the digital economy, the production factors of digital technology have become an important factor for China to absorb foreign investment. In the context of opportunities and challenges, only by grasping the new factors of production, including figures, can China promote the stability of foreign investment.

The rise of digital elements releases the magnetic attraction of attracting investment

New trends in international trade! Under the high attention of the central and local governments, China has made remarkable achievements in stabilizing foreign investment. In the face of the impact of adverse factors such as the slowdown of global economic growth and the rise of investment protectionism, China has steadily promoted the work of stabilizing foreign investment. The scale of attracting foreign investment has been continuously expanded, the structure of attracting foreign investment has been increasingly optimized, and the quality of attracting foreign investment has been continuously improved, which has made a positive contribution to stabilizing the macroeconomic market.

New trends in international trade! The achievement of these achievements is the affirmation of China's breakthrough in attracting investment, and also the expectation of another peak in the future. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed that "promote high-level opening up", "reasonably reduce the negative list of foreign investment access, protect the rights and interests of foreign investment in accordance with the law, and create a market-oriented, law-based and international first-class business environment". The Central Economic Work Conference in 2022 also requested that "greater efforts should be made to promote the stability and expansion of foreign capital".

To sort out the current overall trend of China's absorption of foreign investment, Wang Yongjin, a professor at the School of Economics of Nankai University, summarized it as "one step back and three steps forward" in an interview with the reporter of International Business News.

"Specifically, '1 retreat' refers to the withdrawal of foreign capital from some traditional labor-intensive industries due to the development of robotics and automation technology; '3 entry' refers to the accelerated entry of foreign capital in energy, information technology and data-intensive industries." Wang Yongjin believes that this trend is mainly led by the combination of policy and technical factors. Policy factors include jointly building the "the Belt and Road" and implementing RCEP, while technical factors refer to the digital technology revolution. "The key production factors of digital technology include energy and data. Changes in production factors have fundamentally changed the motivation for foreign investment to enter the Chinese market."

New trends in international trade! In Wang Yongjin's view, over the past years, foreign-funded enterprises have mainly focused on the policy of attracting investment and cheap production factors including labor and land. "However, in the era of digital economy, foreign-funded enterprises pay more attention to energy and data, which is also the key factor for the continuous growth of foreign investment in the central and western regions. In addition, the continuous strengthening of the comprehensive advantages of attracting foreign investment, which is composed of a super-scale market, a complete industrial system, rich human resources, and a continuously optimized business environment, is also an important basic condition for China to successfully attract foreign investment." Wang Yongjin said.

Striding forward in the digital era, opportunities and challenges coexist

In recent years, the digital economy has developed at an unprecedented speed, with a wide range of radiation and an unprecedented degree of influence. It is becoming a key force in restructuring global factor resources, reshaping the global economic structure and changing the global competition pattern.

New trends in international trade! At the same time, the vigorous development of the digital economy has also brought new opportunities and challenges to China's efforts to attract foreign investment. In Wang Yongjin's view, the opportunity is to take advantage of the technological and management advantages of foreign-funded enterprises in the digital economy to further optimize the structure of attracting investment, and actively guide foreign investment in advanced manufacturing, modern services, energy conservation and environmental protection, scientific and technological innovation and other fields; The challenge lies in the lack of risk awareness in the process of attracting investment in some places. "In the era of digital economy, the strategy of 'market for technology' in many industries needs to be reconsidered. For example, as data becomes a key factor of production, the transfer of market means the transfer of data, and the transfer of data may lead to the loss of technology or even buried security risks. For this issue, it is necessary to formulate policies at the central level and coordinate local governments to step in step."

New trends in international trade! Speaking about how China can better attract foreign investment in the digital economy era, Wang Yongjin believes that it should be divided into two parts: some industries should continue to encourage and support foreign investment, especially key technologies and parts manufacturing related industries. Take the automobile industry as an example. At present, the bottlenecks of China's automobile manufacturing industry are mostly concentrated in the upstream research and development and basic manufacturing, while the advantages are mainly in the downstream manufacturing. Foreign enterprises should be encouraged to cooperate with Chinese enterprises in the upstream link, so as to help China consolidate its advanced industrial base.

"At the same time, in order to better coordinate development and security, the introduction of investment in some fields must be limited, especially in the industries that use data intensively, and the data collection and use behavior of foreign enterprises should be restricted to a certain extent," Wang Yongjin said.