A panoramic view of the Daya Bay petrochemicals industrial zone in Huizhou, a key industrial cluster in Guangdong province, where the $13.7 billion ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project is located.

Multilingual service is available at the administrative service center in Hengqin, Guangdong province. The province has spared no effort to improve its business environment in recent years.

Guangdong's ongoing appeal as a destination for foreign direct investment is evidenced by the number of high-profile overseas-funded manufacturing and innovation projects that have settled in the South China province.

Among them is a new factory of Panasonic Industrial Devices Materials, which came on stream in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong, in September.

Mainly focused on the production of 5G electronic materials, the factory will enable a 1.3-fold increase in the Japan-headquartered company's total output of electronic materials when it hits full capacity.

In Huizhou, construction of the Daya Bay research and development center, part of the $13.7 billion ExxonMobil Huizhou ethylene project, started in February. The ExxonMobil Huizhou ethylene project is one of the two wholly foreign-owned petrochemical projects involving over $10 billion investment in Guangdong, with the other being the BASF's Verbund site in Zhanjiang.

As a growing number of foreign-funded businesses are establishing or expanding their presence in Guangdong, the province is reinforcing its standing as a model of opening-up.

From January to August, the province's manufacturing industry posted 36.82 billion yuan ($5.06 billion) worth of paid-in foreign capital, increasing 19 percent from the same period last year. Of that, 17.62 billion yuan went to the high-tech sector, a jump of 39 percent year-on-year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Commerce.

Data from the Guangdong Department of Commerce show paid-in foreign investment in the province reached 122.55 billion yuan during the first eight months of this year, representing a slight uplift of 0.3 percent year-on-year. That involved nearly 13,780 new foreign-funded businesses, up 57 percent.

Welcoming environment

The flocks of foreign investment projects to Guangdong are partly attributed to the province's friendly business environment.

In recent years, Guangdong has created a top-notch market-oriented, rule-of-law international business environment by introducing a series of policies and measures and launching new initiatives to stabilize foreign investment.

For example, China's first local regulations on the protection of interests of foreign investment came into force in Guangdong in March 2022.

In July, Guangdong released a three-year action plan for improving its business environment and in August it issued a policy on promoting foreign investment, especially in the manufacturing industry. The policy provides specific measures from the three perspectives of continuous optimization of the investment environment, enhancing investment services and encouraging investment to flow into given sectors.

Additionally, the Guangdong Department of Finance earmarks annual funding to encourage local governments to attract foreign investment, build related facilities, award major foreign investment projects and introduce headquarters of multinational companies.

Since 2018, an accumulative sum of nearly 4.7 billion yuan from the fund has been used to support more than 300 projects and attract paid-in foreign capital worth more than 200 billion yuan, according to the province's department of commerce.

Zhu Xiaojun, deputy head of the department, said Guangdong has always acted as a magnet for foreign investors, and by revving up optimization of related policies and measures, it will continue to provide strong support for development of its modern industrial system.

The series of policies and measures Guangdong has been rolling out to build itself into a magnet for investment have enhanced the province's reputation among investors and improved the quality of foreign investment, according to industry insiders.

A business environment report, released by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce in 2022 and based on feedback from 10,000 private businesses, showed that Guangdong has been best reputed for its business environment nationwide for three consecutive years.

Efforts redoubled

The provincial government released a batch of policies and measures in March to keep investment promotions effective and to secure high-quality investments. According to the new policies and measures, seeking investment is on their must-do list for top officials in the province's 21 cities.

Also, the province has prioritized 20 strategic industrial clusters in its investment attraction strategy, including new-generation electronic information, green petrochemicals, advanced materials, semiconductors and integrated circuits, and advanced machinery manufacturing, for which land supply is guaranteed.

Another important effort to attract foreign investment projects is the Global Investment Promotion Conference for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The event, held in Guangdong annually, aims to enhance industry cooperation domestically and internationally, and create a brand for sharing development potential and investment opportunities in the Bay Area and gathering high-quality industry and innovation resources from around the world, said Zhang Jingsong, head of the provincial department of commerce.

Co-hosted by the governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, the 2023 edition of the conference is being held in Guangzhou on Wednesday and Thursday. It includes a main conference, investment policy briefings and matchmaking events tailored for given industries.

In addition to the themed event in Guangzhou, nine conferences on investment promotion in other cities in the Peal River Delta and overseas roadshows and investment promotional activities will take place.

The inaugural conference was held in Guangzhou at the end of last year, attracting representatives from more than 300 multinationals and resulting in 853 investment and trade projects signed, with a combined contract value of 2.5 trillion yuan. Of the 853 projects, 814 are investment projects.

As of the end of October, 638 of the 814 investment projects have started construction, involving total paid-in capital worth 413.38 billion yuan. Of those projects, 200 are foreign-funded and 163 have started construction, with paid-in investment exceeding 100 billion yuan, government data indicate.