Chongqing- The 16th Annual Meeting of the Chongqing Mayor's International Economic Advisory Council (CMIA) is being held online and offline, with ten enterprises attending offline.

Advisors confident in Chongqing's future development

Koichi Miyata, chairman of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, said that Chongqing, a central city in western China, has been developing rapidly in recent years. He is very optimistic about the development prospects of the municipality and is willing to make more suggestions for its development.

Benjamin Keswick, Executive chairman at Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd., believes that Chongqing has obvious geographical advantages and a good investment environment. He is full of confidence in the future development of the city.

Such attention and recognition have helped Chongqing expand its influence and popularity.

For example, during the second and third China International Import Expo, Chongqing held informal talks on investment and trade cooperation in Shanghai. A person in charge at Qualcomm, an advisory company, said to the guests that Chongqing is a city with many advantages and expected more technology companies to join hands with the municipality as it does. A representative of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd. said that thanks to the strong support from Chongqing, the group has achieved its current success in China.

The CMIA initiator Gérard Mestrallet, former Chairman of Suez, said that the idea behind the initiation is to leverage Suez's high visibility and global presence to promote Chongqing to other countries.

In 2006, 17 senior executives of multinational companies were engaged as International Economic advisors to the Mayor of Chongqing, and the number has grown to 38 this year.

The 16th annual CMIA meeting is taking place in Chongqing between September 23-25. (Photo/ Wang Xiaoyan)

1,000 Golden ideas contributed in 15 years

This annual meeting is themed with "Build Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle: Opportunities and Challenges." Sixteen advisors will give advice and suggestions for the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, centering on three major topics: "work together to build a modern industrial system," "make concerted efforts to create a first-class business environment," and "join hands to deepen international exchanges and cooperation."

"The knowledgeable, experienced advisor guests, who are all heads of Fortune 500 enterprises and internationally renowned enterprises, can provide more and better suggestions for Sichuan-Chongqing cooperation," said Xu Xincheng, Deputy Director of Chongqing Municipal Commission of Commerce.

According to statistics, over the past 15 years, the advisors have contributed nearly 1,000 "golden ideas," including specific measures on information, finance, intelligence, and other industries, as well as macro suggestions on the construction of an inland opening-up highland, a pilot free trade zone, an inland international logistics hub, etc.

Chongqing has treasured them, kept every suggestion on record, and actively implemented them.

For example, Kanetsugu Mike, Chairman of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and former President of MUFG Bank, suggested that Chongqing should provide accommodation, food and beverage, and entertainment resources with its own characteristics for foreign tourists to enhance the international influence of the city's tourism.

In this regard, Chongqing has completed the evaluation and identification of the first municipal night culture and tourism consumption cluster areas and recommended nine units to apply for the first national ones.

For another example, Koji Nagai, Chairman of Nomura Holdings, Inc., proposed that Chongqing should accelerate the introduction of high-end talents and further improve the business environment from the perspective of optimizing human resources.

The Notice on the Measures of Chongqing for Accelerating the Gathering of Outstanding Scientists and Their Teams and the Measures of Chongqing for Supporting the Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Young Talents issued this year encourages those talents in innovation and entrepreneurship in the city through resettlement funding, project support, scientific research funds, financial support, achievement incentive and so on.

Leaders of global Fortune 500 companies are sharing their wisdom on the future high-quality development path for Chongqing. (Photo/ Wang Xiaoyan)

41 Investment agreements in 15 years with advisory companies 

According to Chongqing Municipal Commission of Commerce, in the past 15 years, the advisory companies have signed 41 investment cooperation agreements with the city, making an important contribution to the high-quality development of Chongqing.

Among them, Ford built three auto factories, one engine factory, and one transmission factory in Chongqing with an annual production capacity of 1 million vehicles, 800,000 engines, and 1.04 million transmissions, respectively, which have directly promoted the upgrading of the city's automobile industry.

While investing in Chongqing, HP also continues to actuate supporting enterprises to settle here. So far, more than 250 million HP notebooks have been produced in the municipality, contributing the annual output value of about 100 billion yuan (about 15.5 billion U.S. dollars) and making Chongqing the most important notebook manufacturing base in the world.

Corning has already invested in a display screen project with an annual output value of 2.4 billion yuan in Chongqing. During the annual meeting, it will sign another display screen project of 1 billion U.S. dollars with Liangjiang New Area to help Chongqing build the whole industry chain of "chips, LCD panels, intelligent terminals, core components, and Internet of Things (IoT)."

Many other advisory companies regard Chongqing as an important city for their strategic planning in western China and even in China.

The Phase II of the SK Hynix Chongqing Project, located in Chongqing Xiyong Micro-electronics Industrial Park, has been officially put into operation. The combined production capacity of the first and second phases of the project accounts for more than 40% of SK Hynix's flash memory products, making it the largest overseas encapsulation and testing base of the group.

AT&S (Chongqing), established by AT&S Group in the municipality, is the only company that can supply high-end IC substrates in China.

Focusing on industrial digital upgrading, Schneider Electric has settled its first intelligent manufacturing innovation center in China in the city and actively cooperated with universities in Chongqing.

Data show the significance of such cooperation: during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, foreign-invested enterprises contributed more than 50% of the city's imports and exports. In 2020, Chongqing's foreign trade volume reached 651.34 billion yuan, of which foreign-invested enterprises contributed 349.51 billion yuan, accounting for 53.7%.

At the same time, with the drive of the advisory companies, the actual utilization of foreign investment in Chongqing has remained above 10 billion U.S. dollars for ten consecutive years.

"The deepening cooperation between the advisory companies and Chongqing has injected lasting momentum into the city's economic development," Xu said.