The exhibition booth of Swiss technology and engineering company ABB Group at the 2023 World Robot Conference held in Beijing in August.

Fueled by robust political confidence, substantial expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative and a bilateral free trade agreement, business ties between China and Switzerland have proven to be resilient and are poised for improvement in the upcoming years, said market watchers and business leaders.

They said that enhanced economic and trade relations between the two countries are expected to generate a mutually beneficial scenario. China, with its vast import market, offers significant opportunities for Switzerland.

Thanks to their complementary industrial and export structure, both countries have room to expand trade and investments, enabling deeper collaboration in areas including high-end manufacturing, modern services, environmental protection and smart city development in the long run, said Xu Hongcai, deputy director of the China Association of Policy Science's Economic Policy Committee.

Since 2010, China has been Switzerland's biggest trading partner in Asia and the third-largest globally after the European Union and the United States, according to information released by the Swiss government.

Despite the disruption of the global supply chain, weakening goods demand in many countries and geoeconomic challenges, the trade value between China and Switzerland grew by 6.3 percent year-on-year to $54.34 billion in the first 11 months of 2023, data from China's General Administration of Customs showed.

China exports mainly electric vehicles, power storage equipment, computers, transport equipment, chemical products, raw materials, electronics, textiles, garments and household appliances to Switzerland. Swiss exports to China are pharmaceutical products, machinery parts, power-generating equipment, general industrial machinery, measuring and control instruments, agricultural products and timepieces.

To boost their economic connections, the China-Switzerland Free Trade Agreement was signed by senior Chinese and Swiss government officials in Beijing in 2013. It entered into force on July 1, 2014. The agreement contains provisions on trade in goods and services, non-tariff barriers to trade, intellectual property protection, and sustainable trade and development. The two countries have maintained close contact on upgrading their FTA.

The FTA between China and Switzerland has played a positive role in assisting economic cooperation and growth between the two countries with a high level of opening-up, broad coverage and mutual benefit to both sides, said Liang Ming, director of the Institute of International Trade under the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing.

Switzerland and China also signed a memorandum of understanding on third-party market cooperation in connection with the BRI in 2019.

With China entering a new era of green and innovation-led growth, Morten Wierod — a member of the executive committee at the Swiss technology company ABB — said the company will spend more than $100 million in research and development in China for its electrification business, of which he is president, over the next three years.

"This growth stems from the accumulation of additional local knowledge and expertise. We are not only expanding through our internal innovation resources but also making investments in laboratories and testing equipment. This is essential because much of our research involves long-term thinking and the development of technologies that do not yet exist," said Wierod during his visit to the group's plants in Xiamen, Fujian province, in early January.

"Looking at the numbers, if you look at the size of the Chinese economy, that is still the largest market in the region and even with growth of around 5 percent, the growth of China will then be bigger than the whole market of India and Indonesia added together, just to put things in perspective," he added.

In addition to supplying products to clients and consumers in the domestic market, ABB also found China one of its export hubs. Products manufactured by the group's plants in China not only supply clients across the Asia-Pacific region, but are shipped to markets in the Middle East, Latin America and Europe, according to the Zurich-headquartered group.

Eager to seize more market share in China, International Workplace Group, or IWG, a Swiss provider of hybrid working solutions, opened a large-scale flexible workspace in the Lujiazui area of Pudong, East China's Shanghai, in December, as demand for hybrid working accelerates in the city.

Shanghai is one of China's fastest-growing cities. Demand for workspace in the area has performed strongly, with the number of inquiries at IWG locations continuing to increase, said Edward Hu, country manager of IWG China.

Hybrid working solutions refer to a group of workers that are distributed across various locations, from traditional offices and factory spaces to remote locations, including employees' homes. Such a model offers people flexibility and choice and has driven new approaches to agility, collaboration and ways of working over the past two decades.

"We are establishing an even stronger footprint in Shanghai with this latest opening. As one of the world's leading business hubs, the city is a fantastic place to accelerate our expansion plans. The need for high-quality flexible workspaces continues to soar as hybrid working becomes the new normal," said Mark Dixon, CEO and founder of IWG.

IWG to date has developed more than 20 brands, such as Regus, Spaces and HQ, with 3,500 locations across more than 120 countries and regions globally.

In the field of financial cooperation, Sang Baichuan, dean of the Institute of International Economy at the University of International Business and Economics, said that capital market ties between China and Switzerland have been reinforced with mutual recognition of auditing standards and supervision between the countries.

The Chinese government realized the mutual equivalence of auditing standards and auditing supervision with the Swiss Federal Audit Office on Jan 1, 2023.

For accounting firms that are registered in Switzerland or China and issue audits on the financial statements of economic entities, the auditing supervision systems in the two countries are equivalently applicable, according to information released by China's Ministry of Finance.

Sang said this move has laid the groundwork for a mutually beneficial auditing supervision cooperation mechanism and is conducive to promoting the connectivity of the countries' capital markets.

Accounting firms in the two countries have seen their auditing costs and efficiency enhanced. Chinese companies can therefore be provided with more investment and financing channels, according to the ministry.