Chongqing- Shelly Xie, General Manager at CBRE Southwest China, serving as one of the panel speakers at the 2021 Asia Enterprise of Tomorrow Conference, believes that more and more companies choose to invest in Asia or Chongqing in the future.
Shelly Xie, General Manager at CBRE Southwest China, believes more and more companies choose to invest in Asia or Chongqing in the future. (iChongqing/ Wang Yiling)
CBRE delivers innovative corporate real estate solutions to suit the specific needs of both occupiers or tenants and owners or investors. They offer an array of services spanning multiple practice areas, including space acquisition and disposition, as well as strategic consulting services across all market sectors.
Shelly Xie, General Manager at CBRE Southwest China (left), accepts an interview with an iChongqing reporter Vivian Yan (right). (iChongqing/ Wang Yiling)
Why can Asia or China have such a large foreign investment attraction？
According to Xie, one of the reasons is because of the signed agreement of Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which will become the world's largest free-trade organization in the future and benefit enterprises to invest in Asia for 5 to 10 years.
The RCEP agreement was signed among its 15 participating countries last November, launching the world’s biggest free-trade bloc. Participating countries include the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
"We think it is a powerful benefit for the opening-up of China as a whole," said Xie. "the entire RCEP agreement covers 15 countries, accounting for one-third of the world's total economic output and total foreign trade."
Chongqing has close contacts with Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and other countries. With the in-depth implementation of RCEP, Chongqing will be easier to attract investment in these countries by reducing trade standard barriers and promoting trade facilitation.
An official of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Commerce stated that the tariff reduction mentioned in the RCEP would further reduce the transaction cost of import and export business, stimulate the market passion for import and export trade, and encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in the import and export trade.
Customs data shows, Chongqing's trade with major trading partners, including ASEAN, hit 40.11 billion yuan, up 30.4 percent over the first four months of this year.
According to Xie, In the first quarter of 2021, technology companies accounted for 41% of the office leasing market in China, hitting a record number. In addition, investors used to buy general office buildings, but now they pay more attention to life medicine-related properties as investment objects, such as laboratories, data centers, and scientific research centers.
“At present, relatively new technology industries, such as the health care and life medicine industries, are relatively active in Chongqing or the southwest region," said Xie. "We also see that some advanced manufacturing industries in Chongqing are also constantly expanding."
A signing ceremony of 24 projects with an investment of RMB 21.2 billion (about USD 3.17 billion) took place at Chongqing High-Tech Zone last October. These key innovation platform projects of universities and research institutes in the Western (Chongqing) Science City included major scientific infrastructure, high-end research and development platforms, and achievement transformation bases, involving biomedicine, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, intelligent manufacturing, big data, and modern agriculture.
Furthermore, Chongqing will strive for the city’s total industrial output value to exceed 3 trillion yuan (about USD 463.5 billion) by 2025, including the electronic information industry to reach a trillion, according to a press conference held by the Information Office of Chongqing Municipal People's Government on April 29.
In addition to those areas, Xie continued to believe the tertiary industry in Chongqing can also be upgraded to a certain extent. For example, areas including professional services, and finance, and insurance. "These areas also serve as the objects of our services," said Xie.
(Du Min, as an intern, also contributed to this report.)
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