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December 30, 2019

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Home » City specials » Suzhou

Suzhou’s economy hitting on all cylinders

Eric Monzon, vice president of global joints manufacturing at Johnson & Johnson, was allowed to keep his Suzhou office after being promoted and moving to Cork, Ireland.

Monzon’s Suzhou office is a stronghold for him to do business in the Asia-Pacific region. The former general manager of Johnson & Johnson Medical (Suzhou) Ltd was determined to stay rooted in Suzhou, especially because the Suzhou campus of his company was included in the Suzhou Area of the Jiangsu free trade zone in September.

From January to November of this year, Suzhou’s economy has maintained steady growth, with imports and exports exceeding 2.01 trillion yuan (US$287 billion).

Suzhou’s exports during that period were 1.21 trillion yuan, accounting for 7.1 percent of the country’s total exports. The city’s exports to Southeast Asian countries increased by 12.1 percent while trade with member states of the Belt and Road Initiative reached nearly 430 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.9 percent.

During that same period, registered foreign investment increased by 0.7 percent to US$9.99 billion while the actual use of foreign investment reached US$4.57 billion, up 4.3 percent from a year ago. Additionally, foreign-funded enterprises set up 29 regional headquarters or subsidiaries with sharing functions in Suzhou.

Behind the figures are the recognition and trust of more than 17,000 foreign-funded enterprises from more than 120 countries and regions of Suzhou’s efforts to build an open and innovative economy.

Lan Shaomin, Party secretary of Suzhou, said that Suzhou is an open economic city.

“Only by taking the historical opportunities with the implementation of a number of national strategies, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta region and the establishment of free trade zone, Suzhou will be able to create another miracle of development to promote industrial transformation, strengthen effective investment, optimize business environment and build internal impetus for high-quality development.”

The Spotlight Automotive Project was inaugurated in Suzhou. As a result, Honeywell has increased its investment. Research institutions from Oxford University and Harvard University established Suzhou campuses.

Focusing on the next generation of display technology, biomedicine, new medical devices, new energy and other industries, Suzhou is building 10 advanced manufacturing clusters each with an output value of more than 100 billion yuan.

Wu Qingwen, Party secretary of Suzhou Industrial Park Works Committee, said the park is studying and formulating new policies to further promote the development of the biomedical industry.

In the next stage, the park will lead the development of global biomedicine. It will also promote the research and development and industrialization of novel medicine, high-end medical devices and key parts, biotechnology and emerging therapies, while its industrial scale will exceed 160 billion yuan by 2022, Wu said.

The Suzhou New District in the western part of the city is dedicated to innovation. The district has introduced more than 100 institutions, including the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Research Institute for Environmental Innovation (Suzhou), Tsinghua. It has also cultivated more than 500 high-tech enterprises.

Wu Xinming, Party secretary of the Suzhou New District Works Committee, said the new district will give full play to the leading role of prestigious institutes in industrial innovation to establish two 100-billion-yuan industrial clusters, next-generation information technology and high-end manufacturing with intelligent manufacturing as the main component in three to five years.

The district will also build two 50-billion-yuan modern industrial clusters — one for medical devices and biomedicine and the other for new energy, Wu said. “We are creating an ‘industrial summit’ on an ‘industrial plateau’.”

Suzhou will continue to optimize its business environment and offer more competitive services while it matches the highest international standards.

According to Lan, Suzhou has implemented the “negative list” for market access for many years. In the next stage, it will provide what the enterprise needs, “so the enterprise has a real sense of gain,” Lan said.

The first one-stop service center in the country was established in Suzhou Industrial Park. Suzhou’s high-quality investment-and-development environment has won wide praise from the international community.

The city was selected as China’s Gold Medal City for Investment Environment by the World Bank, and the most attractive Chinese city in the eyes of foreign talent for eight years in a row.

At the beginning of this year, Kunshan launched the “1330” model, so the registration and establishment of a new company takes only one day, real estate registration takes three days and permits for industrial construction projects are issued within 30 days.

The satellite town of Suzhou also proposed a series of policies and measures to boost the development of foreign investment and create an internationalized business-friendly environment.

The move by the Kunshan authority helps attract new businesses. By the end of October, more than 130,000 new businesses had been set up in Kunshan, an average of 440 every day, which brings the total number of businesses in Kunshan beyond 470,000.

At the same time, more and more entrepreneurs have started their businesses in Suzhou and dedicated themselves to Suzhou’s innovative development.

Michael Yu, founder and chief executive officer of Innovent Biologics Inc, spent seven years leading his company to become one of the most influential unicorn enterprises in China’s biopharmaceutical industry.

In March, Innovent launched Tyvyt (sintilimab injection), an innovative PD-1 inhibitor used to treat Hodgkin’s lymphoma, at a price less than half of similar imported products.

Suzhou has established 15 incubators for international companies, established cooperation with 31 overseas organizations and set up 10 overseas talent-liaison offices. A global network of talent introduction is becoming more and more efficient.




 

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