In March 2018, the China-Italy Investment Promotion Center, jointly established by the Consulate General of Italy in Chongqing, the Chongqing Liangjiang New Area Administrative Committee and the China-Italy Chamber of Commerce (CICC), settled in Chongqing Liangjiang International Cooperation Center.

"In the past over two years, we have made a package of remarkable achievements together with Liangjiang New Area," remarked Mr. Paolo Bazzoni, Chairman of CICC.

The achievements include the first overseas agent investment invitation platform, 20-plus market matchmaking events, and communication visits of more than 120 Italian enterprises to Liangjiang New Area. Among them, the Sofima filter project, with a total investment of 20 million euros, was officially put into operation in June 2019 in the plant in Yufu Industrial Development Zone of Liangjiang New Area. After being expanded, the project covers a total area of over 17,000 square meters, of which nearly 14,000 square meters will be used for high-tech filtration system production. The project marks a milestone for CICC's successful investment in Liangjiang's key industries.

As CICC's project leader, Zhao Lingling acts as a liaison between Italian enterprises and Liangjiang New Area. For example, Zhao said, a special investment invitation group, Liangjiang New Area Investment Invitation Group, has been set up, and through CICC, Italian enterprises can directly negotiate with the investment invitation administration of Liangjiang New Area.

"It has greatly streamlined the process and shortened the time of communication, and accelerated the implementation of policies, cutting considerable manpower and material costs for enterprises," Zhao added that due to the internationalized business environment in Liangjiang New Area, English is frequently used in communication between government and enterprises, which has greatly facilitated the direct, accurate communication of foreign-invested enterprises and their executives with Chinese administrations.

For the same reason, the COVID-19 outbreak did not slow down the pace of Italian enterprises entering Liangjiang New Area.

In March this year, Modula China Automation Equipment Co., Ltd., a company mainly engaged in the R&D, production and sales of automated warehousing equipment, was located in Liangjiang New Area.

By far, 15 Italian enterprises, including Saic-iveco Hongyan Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. (SIH), Saic Fiat Powertrain Hongyan Co., Ltd. (SFH), Chongqing Chuanyi AnsaldoBreda Railway Transportation Equipment Co., Ltd. and the project of Sofima Automotive Filter (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., have settled in Liangjiang New Area, with a total investment of RMB 9.4 billion.

Since the beginning of 2020, the building of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle and the development of Chongqing's "one area and two clusters" strategy have endowed Liangjiang New Area with a new mission: to build an opening-up portal in inland China and a smart city in Chongqing.

Such a trend has also attracted more Italian enterprises to invest in western China and Liangjiang New Area.

According to Mr. Paolo Bazzoni, the rapid development of Liangjiang's automobile, aerospace, machinery and equipment, urban rail transit, and clean energy industries presents common opportunities to Italy's many quality enterprises.

Over the past years, a series of international industrial parks have been successfully built and put into use in Liangjiang. In order to better undertake international cooperation projects and attract foreign investment, Liangjiang New Area has taken targeted measures to promote international cooperation in project introduction, industrial communication, trade, technical cooperation, and personnel exchanges.

A large number of world-class enterprises have settled in Liangjiang New Area, which has further boosted Liangjiang's economy and expanded the market, thus becoming a more and more attractive foreign investment destination.

This has been proved by data.

In 2018, the paid-in foreign investment in Liangjiang New Area stood at 2.883 billion US dollars. Specifically, the foreign investment in actual use in the directly administered area amounted to 2.368 billion US dollars, accounting for 82.1% of the total.

In 2019, the paid-in foreign investment in Liangjiang New Area reached 3.23 billion US dollars. Specifically, the foreign investment in actual use in the directly administered area totaled 2.82 billion US dollars, accounting for 87.3% of the total.

The pouring in of foreign investment is improving Liangjiang's modern industrial system, as well as attracting domestic capitals to move westward to Liangjiang.

5G technology, an important part of the new infrastructure, has been under trial, planning, and deployment in advance in Liangjiang.

On August 26, 2019, Lenovo, one Fortune Global 500 enterprise, signed a contract with Liangjiang New Area, locating its 5G Cloud Network Convergence Headquarters project in the new area. That project opened a new page as the first 5G headquarters project of a Fortune Global 500 enterprise in Chongqing.

Inspur, another information technology giant, also has a great interest in investing in Liangjiang.

As one pioneer in China's IT industry, Inspur is mainly engaged in four industrial clusters, namely, cloud data center, cloud service big data, smart city and intelligent enterprise, and provides IT products and services to more than 120 countries and regions around the world, comprehensively meeting the informatization needs of governments and enterprises. As early as 2015, Inspur has located its data center in Liangjiang New Area.

In April this year, Inspur signed an agreement with Liangjiang to deepen cooperation. According to the agreement, Inspur will set up a BRI industrial Internet headquarters and BRI global industrial Internet R&D center in Liangjiang New Area, and integrate its global industrial Internet R&D resources to build an Industrial Internet cluster in Chongqing based on the platform of Liangjiang New Area.

Pang Songtao, Vice President of Inspur Group, said that the reasons for Inspur to choose to make a key strategic layout in Liangjiang lie in two aspects. The first is Liangjiang's industrial advantages and foundation. Liangjiang pools strengths to build a high-end, high-quality, and high-tech modern industrial cluster represented by the two hundred-billion-yuan industries of electronic information and automobile, which has strong core competitiveness and highly matches Inspur's strategic positioning.

The second is that since Inspur's entering, Liangjiang has provided Inspur with a series of sound investment policies, improved the legal system and management system to ensure that they are in line with international standards, and given strong support to the introduction of high-end talent, high-tech projects and high-quality technologies. In addition, Liangjiang has helped Inspur to conduct technical discussion and demand matchmaking with upstream and downstream enterprises of the industrial chain and provided comprehensive support from the aspects of policies, resources, and ecology, according to Inspur's a development planning and business advantages.

A number of Fortune Global 500 enterprises or leading enterprises, including Tencent, Huawei, and Suning, have contracted with Liangjiang New Area for investment, creating increasingly obvious driving effect through their leading projects.

In 2019 alone, 88 projects in the directly administered area were contracted, with a total contracted investment of RMB 171.623 billion, ranking first among Chongqing's all districts and counties. Liangjiang New Area has realized regular investment invitation with contracts signed almost every week.