Measures unveiled to support leading firms

09-15, 2020

The Shenzhen Municipal Reform and Development Commission recently unveiled an action plan to support major enterprises playing a leading role for high-quality development of key industrial chains.The action plan has 10 detailed measures to help vanguard enterprises improve their driving ability in industrial chains, research and innovation capability and market leading actions by congregating resources for enterprises, supporting innovations by enterprises and strengthening their advantages as enterprise clusters.To help the leading companies in the industrial chain core driving and radiating roles for high-quality development, the plan will promote the coordinated development of enterprises upstream and downstream of the industrial chain by setting up high-quality industrial congregation areas and forming a stable industrial ecological circle.The capabilities of leading enterprises in integrating supporting facilities and their comprehensive competitiveness will be enhanced. Its role in safeguarding the safety of industrial chains will be further maintained.Shenzhen will plan and construct some scientific platforms and facilities to provide technological support and improve the innovative capability of leading enterprises by making up technological shortfalls, and ensure key and core technologies are self-relient and under control. The industrial leaders are also encouraged to carry out research in partnerships with enterprises upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. The plan will support them to develop research on core technologies, next-generation technologies and take the initiative for development.The plan supports leading enterprises to optimize their strengths, renew technologies and products and strengthen their presence in both domestic and global markets by providing application scenarios for their technologies and products, and enhance their advantages as brands of high quality.

Huawei tops China top 500 private firms list

09-14, 2020

Shenzhen-based company Huawei has retained the top spot on the top 500 Chinese private companies list this year, with a revenue of 858.83 billion yuan (US$125.64 billion), Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.The top 500 list, which was unveiled Thursday at the China Top 500 Private Enterprises Summit 2020 held in Beijing, is an annual ranking conducted by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC).A total of 27 Shenzhen companies, including Huawei, Amer, Evergande, Vanke, BYD and SF Express, made it onto the list this year. Delivery giant SF Express broke into the top 50 Chinese private companies for the first time.The threshold for the 500 largest private enterprises stood at 20.2 billion yuan in revenue, up by 1.62 billion yuan from 2019. The thresholds for the top 500 private enterprises in the manufacturing industry and the top 100 private enterprises in the service industry both increased compared with the previous year.According to the report released by ACFIC, Huawei continues to rank first among the top 500 private enterprises and the top 500 private enterprises in the manufacturing industry this year.Suning and Amer International, both moving up one spot compared with last year, entered the top three.Evergrande Group ranked first in the total assets of the top 500 private enterprises with 2.21 trillion yuan, the report showed.SF Express took 45th place on the list with a revenue of 112.19 billion yuan, 17 places higher than last year, and ranked first in the express delivery industry.China's top 500 private enterprises saw steady growth in their ability to innovate during 2019. Within the leading 500 firms, the key technologies of 402 companies were mainly developed independently, accounting for 80.4 percent of the total.The number of valid patents obtained by the top 500 companies grew by 8.46 percent in 2019, while the figure for international patents also increased significantly, according to the report.

Foreign firms praise city's business environment

09-11, 2020

Shenzhen's ever-improving business environment is widely applauded by foreign-funded enterprises that are operating businesses in the city, Shenzhen Evening News reported Thursday.At the Seminar on Jointly Meeting Challenges and Seeking Innovative Development held in the city Wednesday, participating foreign-funded companies expressed their firm confidence in seeking further development in Shenzhen.The city has attracted more than 90,000 foreign-invested enterprises and has absorbed nearly US$300 billion of contractual foreign investment over the past 40 years, with foreign companies having made positive and remarkable contributions to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.Shenzhen kept up its momentum in drawing foreign investment this year. During the January-July period, the city's actual use of foreign capital amounted to nearly US$4.9 billion, according to official data.On Aug. 6, American tech company Dell opened a solution center in Shenzhen Kexing Science Park. The center aims to provide IT planning and investment services for small businesses and help them realize digital transformation.According to Zhu Cheng, manager of the solution center, the fact that Shenzhen has more than 2 million small and medium-sized enterprises, accounting for 99.6 percent of the total number of enterprises, shows that the city has strong market vitality and a superb business environment."More than 70 percent of small businesses in Shenzhen are digitally mature at the medium level or even a higher level," said Zhu, adding that Shenzhen is an important market for Dell.In 2018, Germany's DIHK chambers of industry and commerce established an innovation center in the city."We located the innovation center in Shenzhen to prove to nearly 5,000 German companies the charm of Shenzhen," said Maximilian Butek, delegate and chief representative of the delegation of German Industry and Commerce Guangzhou.The innovation center has organized 20 German delegations to visit Shenzhen for cooperation, helped more than 10 German companies to settle in Shenzhen, and promoted a number of Sino-German cooperation projects.

City unveils measures to boost business environment

08-24, 2020

The Shenzhen Municipal Market Supervision and Regulation Bureau on Thursday released 36 measures in six aspects to further improve the city's business environment and better serve market entities, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported.Among the measures, eight are aimed at facilitating starting and operating businesses. The city will explore the reform of business registration from administrative approval-based to administrative confirmation-based. The registration authority can issue a business license as long as the application materials are complete and in accordance with the legal form.Authorities will integrate multiple approval items involved in the entry of an industry into one comprehensive industry license. The bureau has selected retail pharmacies as the first batch of pilot projects, integrating the drug business license and medical device business license into one license, so as to create a unified license for the retail of drugs and medical devices.The market supervision bureau will pilot the enterprise "dormancy" system in view of the short-term difficulties faced by many enterprises to suspend business.Business entities are allowed to apply for "dormancy" according to the actual needs of production and operation. Businesses will not be included in the list of abnormal operations during "dormancy" and can apply for restoration of normal business before the expiration of "dormancy."Other measures aim to reduce the production and operation costs of enterprises, increase efforts to better serve foreign trade enterprises, and ensure a level playing field.The newly registered business entities in Shenzhen reached 282,000 between January and July this year, an increase of 8.8 percent year on year, statistics from the city's enterprises registration bureau showed recently.

Huawei ranks 1st in global phone sales

08-11, 2020

Huawei Technologies became the world's top smartphone seller, passing rival Samsung for the first time due to strong demand in the second quarter of this year, according to Richard Yu, CEO of the Huawei Consumer Business Group, at the 2020 China Info 100 Summit that kicked off in Shenzhen on Friday.Huawei consumer business revenue in the first half of the year was 255.8 billion yuan (US$36.74 billion) and global sales of smartphones reached 105 million units, Yu said. He said the increase was due to strong sales of high-end products, but gave no further details.Yu also said the production of Kirin chips, designed by Huawei's own engineers, will stop Sept. 15 because they are made by contractors that need U.S. manufacturing technology.He said Huawei lacks the ability to make its own chips."Unfortunately, in the second round of U.S. sanctions, our chip producers only accepted orders until May 15. Production will close Sept. 15. This is a very big loss for us," Yu said at the summit.

2,000 foreign-funded firms set up in city in H1

08-11, 2020

Nearly 2,000 foreign-invested companies were set up in Shenzhen in the first half of the year, attracting approximately US$8 billion of contractual foreign investment, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported Saturday.The actual use of foreign capital exceeded US$4 billion from January to June this year in the city, an increase of 5 percent year on year.Optimistic about the vitality of sci-tech innovation and the advantages of industrial chain agglomeration, ABB Group, a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation, opened an innovation center in Shenzhen at the end of last year.The center focuses on the development of core areas including artificial intelligence, cloud services, cybersecurity, intelligent building and other core areas, and promotes the application of global intelligent building solutions."The open and excellent industrial investment environment and the government's proactive investment policy have made ABB and Shenzhen closely linked with each other," said Zhao Yongzhan, senior vice president of ABB China.Most of the newly established foreign-funded enterprises set up in Shenzhen in the first half of this year belong to the service industry, according to the city's commerce bureau.By the end of June this year, Shenzhen had approved a total of 94,000 foreign direct investment projects involving US$296 billion of contractual investment. The total amount of foreign capital that has been utilized had amounted to US$117.8 billion.The fact that foreign-funded companies keep coming to Shenzhen in large numbers is a clear demonstration of the city's good business environment, said the Daily.According to Qualcomm's innovation center in Shenzhen, the city has attached great importance to the establishment of the center at the time it was set up, not only providing support in terms of site selection, but also financial subsidies that could effectively reduce the company's operating costs.In July, Shenzhen released a series of measures to promote high-quality development of foreign investments to help foreign businesses get through this challenging time.To improve services, Shenzhen will formulate a comprehensive service mechanism to maintain communications with foreign businesses and understand their difficulties in resuming businesses.With the mechanism, the city will be able to understand foreign-funded enterprises' basic information including the progress on returning to work, rate of employee return, capacity utilization and turnover.Efforts will be made to attract more foreign investment to fields such as advanced manufacturing, emerging industries and cutting-edge technologies. Foreign-invested companies will be encouraged to participate in government procurements in a fair way.Channels will be opened for suppliers to address complaints and issues.

SZ consumer market recovers growth in H1

08-10, 2020

With foot traffic rising steadily in key business circles, Shenzhen's consumer market has gradually warmed up and demonstrated obvious momentum of growth, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported yesterday.In the first half of 2020, total retail sales of consumer goods in Shenzhen reached 364 billion yuan (US$52 billion), down 14.8 percent year on year, but increased by 8.1 percentage points compared with the first quarter of the year, according to official statistics.Shenzhen has introduced a broad swath of measures to boost consumer spending and foster steady growth in the economy since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.Various districts across the city have issued a total of 550 million yuan of electronic consumer vouchers to attract residents to dine out and increase spending on retail, accommodation, dining and automobiles.According to statistics, in the first half of the year, Shenzhen registered 325.62 billion yuan in retail sales, accounting for 89.5 percent of the total retail sales of consumer goods, down 13.8 percent year on year, but 8.1 percent higher than in the first quarter.The city's top 100 retail enterprises have showcased strong resilience. In the first half of 2020, the growth rate of Shenzhen's top 100 retail enterprises in retail sales was 3.8 percentage points higher than that of the total retail sales of consumer goods, and nearly 40 percent of the enterprises maintained positive growth.The dining sector has also accelerated recovery, with the number of dine-in customers rising steadily.In the first half of the year, Shenzhen recorded 38.39 billion yuan in food expenses, a year-on-year decline of 22.6 percent. In June, the turnover of the dining industry had recovered to about 90 percent of that in the same period of last year.Residents' restrained consumption has been further unleashed with the epidemic under control in the city. Statistics showed that since the first quarter, the growth rate of retail sales of automobiles, daily necessities, gold and silver jewelry, and cosmetics has risen by 17.4 percent, 15.2 percent, 15.3 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively.

Huawei listed in Forbes' Most Valuable Brands of 2020

07-30, 2020

Shenzhen-based telecom giant Huawei became the only Chinese technology brand listed in this year's list of the world's most valuable brands, released by Forbes on Tuesday.Ranked 93rd on the list, Huawei registered US$8.5 billion in brand value and US$188.6 billion in brand revenue.Forbes' annual list looks at the top 100 companies from fiscal year 2019, valuing their revenue and earnings. Companies with substantial brand value gains in 2019 like Amazon, Netflix and PayPal also seem to be big winners during the pandemic, following overall upward trends for e-commerce, streaming and digital payments.Apple once again topped the list as the most valuable brand with US$241.2 billion in brand value, followed by Google (US$207.5 billion), Microsoft (US$162.9 billion), Amazon (US$135.4 billion) and Facebook (US$70.3 billion), the rankings showed.The tech sector was the most common in the rankings with 20 companies, followed by 14 in financial services, 11 in auto and eight in retail.The top 100 most valuable brands this year were worth US$2.54 trillion in total, up from US$2.33 trillion last year. U.S.-based companies made up more than 50 of the top 100, followed by Germany (10), France (9), Japan (6) and Switzerland (5).In January, Brand Finance, a leading brand valuation and strategy consultancy headquartered in the U.K., named Huawei one of the top 10 most valuable brands for the first time ever.In the Brand Finance Global 500 2020 report, Huawei was the third Chinese company on the list with a brand value of US$65.08 billion, up 4.5 percent year on year."Clearly the next big opportunity for the telecoms industry, the 5G space is inviting fierce competition, with Huawei expanding into markets traditionally covered by Western providers. Despite sparking controversy, the Chinese giant is making clear headway, and with a brand value of US$65.1 billion, now counts among the world's top 10 most valuable brands for the first time," wrote Brand Finance in the report.Huawei's brand value growth can be attributed to its commitment to innovation to continually improve product competitiveness and consumer experience.In 2019, Huawei shipped 240 million units of smartphones and retained its position as the world's second-largest smartphone manufacturer.The company shipped more than 44 million units of its Mate Series and P Series flagship devices, recording a 50- percent increase year on year. Huawei's 5G smartphones recorded 6.9 million unit shipments as of December 2019.Huawei's products and services are available in more than 170 countries and are used by a third of the world's population.

5G smartphone shipments gain momentum

07-24, 2020

Shenzhen-based Huawei shipped over 15 million 5G handsets in the first quarter this year, ranking it first in China's 5G market. It seized 63 percent of the domestic 5G smartphone market and 40 percent of the global market as well in the first three months, according to Shenzhen Economic Daily, quoting executives of Huawei Technologies at a recent summit.A report released by Counterpoint Research showed that Huawei had overtaken Samsung in April in the global smartphone market due to COVID-19 forcing the closure of physical stores and damped down the smartphone demand in Samsung's markets in India, the U.S., Latin America, and parts of Europe.The growth of Huawei could be attributed to the Chinese market that has recovered since April, while demand for new smartphones has collapsed in most international markets.The Counterpoint Research report shows sales of 5G smartphones in China jumped over 15 percent in the first quarter with Huawei accounting for over half of the total sales.Huawei has released more than 19 models of 5G phones with prices ranging from 2,000 yuan to 16,000 yuan (US$285-2,284), targeting different consumer groups. 5G handsets like the Mate 30 are in great demand across China, as many users have shown interest in upgrading to a 5G phone.