China Moves to Boost Trade as COVID-19 Measures Adjusted

China is moving fast to boost foreign trade and investment as the country has adjusted its COVID-19 response to facilitate the orderly recovery of normal life and production.

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Cities in coastal regions are holding foreign investment promotional activities or arranging charter planes to send business delegations to meet with overseas customers or investors.

Last week, China announced a new set of measures to optimize its COVID-19 response, ranging from allowing home quarantine for mild and asymptomatic cases to reducing nucleic acid tests to make it easier for people to travel and enter public venues.

Shenzhen, a manufacturing and tech hub, secured a huge amount of investment at a recent investment fair as it strives to boost global investor confidence in its future development. This city saw contracts for 315 projects, with a total investment of US$126.36 billion.

The contracts cover the fields of new-generation electronic information, biomedicine and health, as well as the green and low-carbon industry and the marine industry. Global investors include Amazon, Intel and A.P. Moller-Maersk.

On Friday, the city of Suzhou also chartered a plane to send a business delegation of over 200 people to France and Germany. It was the first such trip from the province to the two countries since the pandemic began.

The city of Wuxi dispatched a business delegation on a 10-day European trip. It is the second overseas business trip that local authorities have organized this year.

"Going abroad is a must. International markets have experienced tremendous changes over the past three years and we are eager to communicate with our clients face-to-face to consolidate our relations," said Wang Yuanpei, manager of Wuxi Jiejin Precision Machinery Co., Ltd.

Another important task is ensuring these export-oriented enterprises can recover to their production levels as soon as possible, with the support of labor recruitment and smooth logistics, said Zhang Chunlong, a researcher at the Jiangsu +Academy of Social Sciences.

More trips for business delegations are in the works. Authorities in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province, are planning to send a business delegation to attend trade fairs and visit clients overseas.

Sending business delegations overseas will not only help increase export orders, but will also attract more foreign investment to high-tech and high-value-added industries, said Tu Lifeng, a researcher at Suzhou University.