City sees 3,000 foreign firms registered in past 9 months

11-26, 2020

Shenzhen has presented a stellar performance in attracting foreign capital in the first three quarters of this year despite the COVID-19 pandemic, as more than 3,000 new foreign-invested enterprises have been set up in the city during the Jan.-Sept. period, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.Statistics from the Shenzhen Municipal Commerce Bureau show that 3,069 foreign-invested enterprises were set up in Shenzhen from January to September in 2020, attracting US$15.34 billion of contracted foreign investment, a year-on-year increase of 5.86 percent. The actualized use of foreign investment reached US$6.27 billion, up 7.66 percent on a yearly basis.As of September this year, Shenzhen had approved 95,626 foreign direct investment projects, absorbing US$303.76 billion of contracted foreign investment. Paid-in foreign investment amounted to US$119.75 billion."In recent years, foreign-invested enterprises have generated about one-fifth of Shenzhen's GDP, 40 percent of the city's foreign trade and nearly 30 percent of its tax revenue every year," said the bureau.About 35 percent of Shenzhen's industrial output value above designated size comes from foreign-invested enterprises, which makes a great contribution to the city's economic development, according to the bureau.Shenzhen's quality business environment has also become a magnet for Fortune 500 companies to set up innovation centers, regional headquarters and R&D centers, and beef up investment in the city. Data shows that nearly 300 of the Fortune 500 companies have invested in Shenzhen."Shenzhen can efficiently turn ideas into products, and the local government and business environment are also very trustworthy," said Maximilian Butek, chief representative of the delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Guangzhou.Butek said that Shenzhen is a "Silicon Valley of Hardware" in the world, which can provide hardware with sufficient supply and at competitive prices.The bureau disclosed that Shenzhen will strive to relax market access for foreign investors to establish investment companies and engage in audio-visual products production, stem cell medical engineering and other businesses in the city.

Huawei, Tencent get leading technology awards

11-25, 2020

Two Shenzhen-based companies, Huawei and Tencent, have won the Prizes for World Leading Technologies at the Light of Internet Expo of the 2020 World Internet Conference (WIC) that opened in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, on Sunday.Tencent won the prize with its product "Tencent Conference" and Huawei won the title with its cloud-based "Intelligent Twins."After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tencent opened its virtual conference that can hold 300 people and expanded its virtual conference to 100,000 cloud hosts in eight days. Its cloud conference service had covered more than 100 countries and regions and helped save social costs worth 71.4 billion yuan (US$10.85 billion) between January and May, according to Wu Zurong, vice president of Tencent Cloud, during a speech at the expo.It was the fifth year for Huawei Technologies to win the prize. According to Shi Jilin, vice president of Huawei Technologies, the Intelligent Twins is a systematic reference architecture proposed for the intelligent upgrade of governments and enterprises. Customers and partners of Huawei can build their own intelligent solutions based on the Intelligent Twins to enable intelligent transformation across industries for all-scenario intelligence.Leveraging on the cloud as the foundation and AI as the core, Huawei and its partners had put the Intelligent Twins into practice in more than 600 projects and are advancing the Intelligent Twins to a wide range of industries, such as government and public utilities, transportation, industry, energy, finance, health care and scientific research.In Shenzhen, the Intelligent Twins project aims to build an integrated deep learning system for citywide coordination, enabling a smart city that is perceptive, conscious, evolvable and familiar. Driven by data as the foundation, Shenzhen Intelligent Twins will leverage emerging technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, IoT, big data, AI, and blockchain to build a system that includes an intelligent service network, applications, intelligent hub, data interaction system and intelligent infrastructure.In the oil and gas industry, the Intelligent Twins project will reimagine the industry chain, shorten the time needed for identification of oil and gas exploration by 70 percent.The Light of Internet Expo, an important part of the WIC, lasted for three days, attracting more than 130 top enterprises and institutions from home and abroad, including Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, Epson and Infosys.This year's expo focused on the world's most recent Internet development trends and cutting-edge technologies, showcasing the latest Internet technologies, achievements, products and applications of 130 enterprises and institutions from home and abroad.Highlights included Alibaba Group's logistics robot and cloud computer, Tencent's "Digital Ark" initiative, China Unicom's 5G smart education device, Baidu's Apollo self-driving car and Zhijiang Lab's brain-like computer.Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year's World Internet Conference has been streamlined into a two-day "Internet Development Forum" with participants taking part both online and onsite.

SZ ranks No. 1 in economic competitiveness

10-26, 2020

Shenzhen ranks No. 1 in comprehensive economic competitiveness in 2020 among Chinese cities, according to a report jointly released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Economic Daily.In terms of sustainable competitiveness of Chinese cities, Shenzhen ranks No. 2, following Hong Kong, the report shows.The report, made by researchers led by Ni Pengfei, assistant president to Economic Strategy Research Institute under CASS, surveyed and compared 291 cities in China around indexes in five subcategories under the comprehensive economic and sustainable competitiveness.In comprehensive economic competitiveness, Shenzhen is followed by Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Suzhou, Taipei, Nanjing, Wuhan and Wuxi took places 6th to 10th. In sustainable competitiveness, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Taipei, Shanghai and Beijing took the first five places. Guangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Qingdao and Wuhan rounded out the top 10.In the subcategories, Shenzhen takes first place in local element competitiveness and economic vitality, second place in environment resilience, fourth place in business environment, No. 5 in global connection competitiveness, No. 6 in tech innovation, No. 8 in business environment competitiveness and No. 10 in living environment competitiveness.In terms of overall layout, the layout of metropolis circles and incremental economic competitiveness are two major reasons leading to differences in competitiveness. The overall economic competitiveness in China is considered strong in the east and the south, weak in the west and the north. Competitiveness is seen as rising in the east and south, stable in the west and declining in the north.In regional development, the competitiveness in the south is getting stronger, the north is getting weaker and the central and eastern areas are becoming more integrated. The metropolis circles headed by a central city, or several central cities, has become the backbone for the urban comprehensive economic competitiveness of Chinese cities, the report shows. The competitiveness of city clusters in the central and southern areas near Bohai Sea in Liaoning Province is much lower than the city clusters at the mouths of the Yangtze and Pearl rivers. The city clusters in Central China are on the rise.The competitiveness among the first- and second-tier cities has become stronger due to small differences.

Private firms take up 84 percent of city's top 500

10-22, 2020

Ping An, Huawei and Amer Group are the top three of 2020's Top 500 Shenzhen Enterprises, and are followed by Evergrande, China Merchants Bank, Tencent, Vanke, BYD, SF Express and CGN, according to a report released at a summit Tuesday.The report indicated that for an enterprise to be among this year's top 10 in Shenzhen, business income was at least 100 billion yuan (US$15. 3 billion) in 2019, up 10 percent over the threshold last year.The report was released at the forum organized by Shenzhen Enterprise Confederation and Shenzhen Entrepreneurs Association at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian District. It revealed that the top 500 Shenzhen enterprises showed robust vitality and kept high-quality development in the face of complicated economic situations at home and abroad. The business revenue of the top 500 enterprises in 2019 was 7.62 trillion yuan, equivalent to 2.8 times the city's GDP in 2019.Among the 500, 422 are private enterprises, making up 84 percent of the total. The revenue of private enterprises in 2019 made up 74.15 percent of the total, and net profits made up 69 percent of the total. Nearly 60 percent of the private enterprises realized profit growth. The revenue of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) had a 19.39 percent increase in 2019 over 2018. The average revenue and profit of SOEs within the top 500 enterprises were 25.3 billion yuan and 2.7 billion yuan, respectively.Among the enterprises, more than half of them are engaged in high-tech industries.

Private firms become backbone of SZ's economy

10-09, 2020

The private economy has become the backbone of Shenzhen's high-quality development, as the city pushes for a level playing field for private companies, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.As of Sept. 28, the number of private business entities in Shenzhen exceeded 3.4 million, accounting for 98.1 percent of all business entities in the city, according to statistics from Shenzhen Institute of Standards and Technology (SIST).The total number of private enterprises reached 2.14 million, accounting for 97 percent of the total number of enterprises in the city, data from SIST showed.Shenzhen's entrepreneurial density ranks first in China. According to statistics, the city has 159 private enterprises per 1,000 people. At present, the number of employees at private enterprises in Shenzhen has topped 9.49 million, accounting for 87 percent of all employees in the city.From January to August this year, 203,100 new private enterprises, an increase of 14.45 percent over the same period last year, were set up in Shenzhen. This means about 1,246 new private enterprises are being registered every working day on average.In recent years, Shenzhen has continuously ramped up efforts to promote the healthy development of private enterprises, reducing the burden of enterprises with practical actions.In strategic emerging industries, the contribution rate of private economy to economic growth has exceeded 50 percent.From the beginning of this year to Sept. 28, the number of newly established private enterprises in strategic emerging industries reached 19,800, an increase of 32.46 percent over the same period last year, statistics from SIST showed.Fang Xianyang, founder of Shenzhen Anxing Information Technology Co. Ltd., attributed the rapid rise of private firms in Shenzhen to the city's ever-improving business environment."The government departments have led all parties to create a good business environment, attracting entrepreneurs to operate business in the city," Fang told the Daily.

24 SZ enterprises among China's top 500

09-30, 2020

A Total of 24 Shenzhen enterprises are listed in China's Top 500 Companies in 2020, which demonstrates the city's strengths in high technology, Internet, finance and advanced manufacturing.Local companies on the list include Ping An, Huawei, Amer, Evergrande, China Merchants Bank, Tencent and Vanke.High-tech giant Huawei ranks 11th and Tencent takes 52nd place. Financial conglomerate Ping An Insurance Group and retail banking leader China Merchants Bank take the sixth and 48th spots, respectively. Advanced manufacturing firms such as BYD and Luxshare Precision have also made it onto the list.To encourage local companies to expand their presence, firms that break into the Fortune Global 500 list and China's Top 500 Companies list for the first time will receive a reward of 30 million yuan (US$4.39 million) and 10 million yuan, respectively, from the Shenzhen government.This year, the number of Chinese enterprises with operating revenue of more than 100 billion yuan in the list reached 217, an increase of 24 compared with 194 in the previous year. Among them, 13 Shenzhen enterprises have entered the "¥100 billion club."The list, compiled by the China Enterprise Conference and China Enterprise Directors Association, has been published for 19 years in a row.According to this year's list, China's largest 500 firms have generated a staggering combined revenue of 86 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.92 trillion yuan over the previous year. Three Shenzhen-based companies, Ping An, Tencent and China Merchants Bank, are among the top 10 most profitable companies in China.A separate report accompanying the list shows that 22 local companies have entered the annual ranking of the country's top 500 manufacturing enterprises.Huawei ranks second and Amer fifth among the top 100 Chinese manufacturing enterprises in 2020. BYD and ZTE take the 67th and 99th places, respectively.Of the 24 Shenzhen companies, 14 are related to the communications equipment manufacturing industry and are engaged in electronic information business.In 2019, the scale of Shenzhen's information and communication technology industry hit 2.78 trillion yuan, ranking first among large and medium-sized cities in China.

City sees more firms in emerging industries

09-23, 2020

The number of newly registered companies in Shenzhen in strategic emerging fields, such as new information technology, digital economy and marine economy, grew by over 40 percent from a year earlier by the end of August, according to data released by the Shenzhen Municipal Market Supervision and Regulation Bureau."In August alone, we saw 3,269 newly registered enterprises in the city's seven strategic emerging industries, up 41.6 percent year on year," said Zhong Xin, deputy director of the city's enterprise registration bureau.The year-on-year growth rates of the number of firms in new information technology, digital economy, marine economy, high-end equipment manufacturing and new materials are 44.5 percent, 58.2 percent, 75 percent, 31.5 percent and 22.7 percent, respectively, according to Shenzhen Special Zone Daily.By the end of August, there were some 3.45 million business entities in Shenzhen, up 9 percent year on year.The new enterprises are mainly located in Longgang, Bao'an, Futian, Longhua and Nanshan districts.Newly registered foreign-funded companies are mainly registered in Futian and Nanshan districts, accounting for 59.4 percent of the total foreign-invested firms in the city.The newly registered business entities are mainly from the tertiary industry and high-end service industry such as retail businesses, dining, accommodation and business services.In July, the number of the city's tertiary industry companies accounted for 95 percent of the total, according to Lai Liying, deputy director of the city's enterprise registration bureau.Guo Lei, an industry development consultation expert, suggested the government issue related industry support policies to enable the city to become an incubator for the development of the country's strategic emerging industries.The city's seven strategic emerging industries are new information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, green and low-carbon technology, biomedicine, digital economy, new material and marine economy.

New tech can recharge phones wirelessly from 120 meters

09-18, 2020

A local company has launched a wireless power transfer (WPT) technology that makes long-distance power transmission safe, reliable and cost-effective. The technology is considered to be a disruptive invention that might change methods of power transmission throughout the world, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported Thursday.With this technology, you can recharge your phones wirelessly at a distance as far as 120 meters away from the power source if your phone is installed with a new chip for the purpose, the paper said.Chen Zhe, operating partner of the company called Sihe Rui (Shenzhen) New Technology Co. Ltd., said at a release event Wednesday that the self-developed direct wave wireless technology can achieve power transfers at distances greater than 120 meters.At this distance, the received power can reach 12 watts (laboratory distance is more than 1.6 kilometers), while the distance of other WPT technologies is measured in millimeters.At present, the conversion efficiency of a mainstream WPT system is 70 to 90 percent, but the conversion efficiency of the company's new WPT system can reach 95 percent, which is close to the efficiency of wired transmission, according to the company.According to Chen, the company's wireless technology is also safe as it has a low frequency and does not emit radiation.Different from the existing mainstream WPT technology, which is at a frequency of 6.78 MHz, the company's system adopts a frequency range of 3 to 6 MHz, which avoids the damage that high frequencies can do to the human body, said Chen.

Foreign-funded companies to be rewarded for investment

09-16, 2020

Foreign-invested enterprises registered in Shenzhen will be given varying amounts as an incentive according to the actual amount of investment in 2020, according to the draft rules of rewarding newly set up foreign-invested companies or those that increase capital.Released by the Shenzhen Municipal Commerce Bureau, the draft rules aim to promote high-quality economic development by utilizing foreign capital.According to the rules, incentives will be given to foreign-funded projects with actual amounts of foreign capital having been put into place in 2020 by existing or new foreign investors.Enterprises with annual actual use of foreign capital of US$5-10 million, US$10-20 million and US$20 million and above, will be awarded 1 million yuan (US$147,400), 2 million yuan and 2.5 million yuan, respectively.The maximum amount of rewards for a foreign-invested enterprise shall not exceed 2.5 million yuan in one year, according to the rules.