With more than 20,000 foreign-invested enterprises, Tianjin has become a hot spot for overseas investment

Historically, Tianjin is one of China’s first ports to open up. Many of the world-renowned entrepreneurs and financiers set up businesses here. Today, Tianjin has improved investment environment and boasts a strong entrepreneurial atmosphere. It has highly attractive market prospects and huge ROI, attracting the attention of more and more overseas investors, and the size and quality of foreign investment continue to increase. By the end of 2015, merchants from over 130 countries and regions have invested in Tianjin with more than 20,000 approved foreign-invested enterprises.

In the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, Tianjin took full advantage of multiple rare opportunities to actively expand opening up, vigorously improved the investment environment, took the initiative to carry out a full range of investment, pushed forward the construction of an open carrier, and became an attracting place for investment.

Utilization of foreign capital is growing. By the end of 2015, the actual use of the “12th Five-Year Plan” period foreign investment is 84.9 billion US dollars, compared with 36.7 billion US dollars in the “11th Five-Year Plan” period, or a growth of 2.3 times. The average annual increase is 14.3% and this number leads the country by a long shot.

Tianjin significantly improved the quality of foreign investment. In the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the implementation of “three-year investment action plan for the world’s top 500 enterprises” achieved remarkable success: the number of world’s top 500 enterprises introduced increased from 143 in the “11th Five-year Plan” period to 163, the number of projects increased from 396 to 480, and the total investment increased from 22.3 billion US dollars to 31 billion US dollars. Since April 2015, when China (Tianjin) Free Trade Zone was officially announced, cluster effect of investment has become increasingly prominent. As of December 2015, 627 foreign-invested enterprises were set up, foreign capital actually used reached 4.72 billion US dollars, and contracted foreign capital reached 17.89 billion US dollars.

Foreign investment structure was further optimized. Manufacturing sector’s utilization of foreign investment increased significantly. During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period foreign large projects continued to gather which promoted bigger and stronger manufacturing industries. By the end of 2015, the city introduced over 77 one hundred million US dollar projects (including projects registered), which 14 billion US dollars of contracted foreign capital, 5.1 and 4.6 times those of the “11th Five-Year Plan” period. Volkswagen, Ai UNITA Biotechnology and a number of quality projects were introduced, Siemens Electrical Drives, Flextronics, and others added investment, showing obvious pulling effect. Utilization of foreign investment in the service sector continued to improve. During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, foreign capital actually used was 44.2 billion US dollars, 2.3 times that in the “11th Five-Year Plan” period. Financial leasing, factoring and other business became new bright spots. During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the service sector continued to attract investment: the actual leasing industry use of foreign investment was 6.5 billion US dollars, and business factoring industry made a breakthrough in attracting foreign investment.

Foreign-invested enterprises have become important force for the economic and social development of Tianjin. The rapid development of Tianjin also created a vast playing field for foreign investors.