Biomedicine emerging as zone's pillar industry

After five years of development at the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park, Innomed Medical Device plans to bring one of its guide wire products - widely used in cardiovascular operations - to major Chinese hospitals in the first quarter of next year.Innomed expects to mass produce the guide wire from next year, and will expand its current 1,600-square-meter plant area to 3,000 sq m in 2019, said Gong Xiaoyan, founder and CEO of Innomed.Gong set up the company at Suzhou Industrial Park in 2013, hoping to localize the production of certain interventional and implantable medical devices. The ultimate goal is to break the monopoly of imported cardiovascular guide wires in the Chinese market, he said.In April, one of Innomed's guide wire products obtained approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. Two months later, the product was also approved in China, marking the startup's substantial progress.Before deciding on the Suzhou Industrial Park, Gong visited numerous similar parks in other Chinese cities including Shanghai and Shenzhen. But the detailed advice and policies offered by the administrators in Suzhou helped him to make his final decision."Our company's chief technology officer has relocated here from the United States. At present, he is the highest-paid employee at Innomed, as he has been offered a number of subsidies based on local policies," he said.Apart from economic incentives, Suzhou Industrial Park has connected the company with a number of local universities, including Soochow University, Xi'an Jiaotong University Suzhou Academy and Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Gong added.According to him, labor costs have been rising lately, but the company has still managed to build a research team of 10 people, representing 20 percent of the company's total headcount.As the biomedicine industry is still an emerging industry, Innomed has to search worldwide for the right personnel. To meet such needs, the biomedicine industrial zone where the company is located provides an industry cluster, helping companies to set up exchanges with other companies in the park."To me, the Suzhou Industrial Park bears some resemblance to Silicon Valley, where academic background talks louder than anything else," he said.The rapid growth of Innomed is just a snapshot of the mushrooming biomedicine industry in the park. At present, Suzhou Industrial Park has gathered more than 1,200 biomedicine companies and 20,000 high-end technology professionals.The output of the park's biomedicine industry is expected to reach 78 billion yuan ($11.3 billion) this year.With the help of the park's administrative committee, more than 20 biomedicine funds had invested there by October, providing financing worth more than 30 billion yuan.Suzhou Industrial Park's effort to nurture biomedicine companies is also a response to the central authorities' call for the fostering of new technologies, new organizational models and new industrial clusters. This was a major message conveyed at the annual Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded in Beijing on Dec 21.According to Wu Qingwen, secretary of the park's Party working committee, biomedicine is one of Suzhou Industrial Park's three pillar industries. The sector's annual growth rate will remain at 30 percent in 2019."The aim is to build an industrial cluster worth more than 100 billion yuan in the near future. We should attach more importance to the innovation of new technologies, as well as the products, materials and products developed on our own," said Wu.Source: China Daily

High-tech seen as key to industrial upgrade

Push for more robust domestic market part of plan to maintain stable growthChina aims to maintain stable industrial growth in 2019 by cultivating a more robust domestic market and further leveling the playing field for foreign and private enterprises, the nation’s top industry regulator said on Friday.The plan came as the nation’s industrial output, an economic indicator measuring industrial activity, is forecast to expand by 6.3 percent in 2018, meeting the target of around 6 percent growth for this year.The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it will step up the push to boost information product consumption and nurture high-tech industries such as wearables, drones and service robots in 2019.“We will guide local governments to build a number of model cities in spurring consumption and roll out policies to promote the development of high-definition video and internet of vehicles,” said Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, at the ministry’s annual work conference, which concluded on Friday.According to Miao, the ministry will also implement policies to expand market access for the shipbuilding, automobile and aircraft sectors, and further multilateral cooperation in equipment manufacturing and information infrastructure construction.His comments came after China managed to keep industrial growth on track this year, despite trade conflicts among major economies that have had a negative impact on China’s domestic economy.In 2018, China’s manufacturing investment growth rebounded significantly, with dozens of intelligent manufacturing pilot projects established and the software and information technology service sector forecast to record 15 percent year-on-year growth.Wang Peng, deputy director of the China Center for Information Industry Development, said that although retail sales growth in consumer electronics slowed in 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s efforts to bring a more robust domestic market will help buoy consumption in information products.“Also, the maturity of fifth-generation mobile communication technology next year will also spur consumers to buy more cutting-edge devices,” Wang said.The ministry said on Friday that research and development of commercial 5G products will be accelerated in 2019, in order to lay down a better telecommunications infrastructure for industrial upgrading.It also aims to make a fresh push to marshal the country’s high-end manufacturing power by strengthening the in-depth integration of cutting-edge technologies into traditional sectors.Qu Xianming, with the National Manufacturing Strategy Advisory Committee, said the goal to move up the industrial value chain is gaining steam across the country, which can play an effective role in buoying the country’s industrial economy.From January to November, the output of China’s high-tech manufacturing industry expanded by 11.8 percent year-on-year, outdoing overall industrial output growth, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.Bai Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said China is welcoming foreign and private enterprises to enter more key sectors, which will inject new vitality into the country’s industries.Source: China Daily

China to expand advanced manufacturing, domestic market: official

China's top economic planner has pledged to strengthen the advanced manufacturing sector and foster stronger domestic market amid efforts to stabilize economic growth.He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China will narrow the gap in major technical equipment capabilities to tap into the huge domestic market potentials in this sector.Efforts will also be made to accelerate upgrading of traditional industries to make them more digitalized, connected and smart, which will also unleash gigantic domestic market potentials, he said.China will also speed up development of world-class technological innovation centers to foster new growth drivers, and expand investment in infrastructure related to key areas such as poverty relief, agriculture and energy to stimulate demand, he said.His remarks came as a key economic meeting of China's leadership put high-quality manufacturing development high on the work agenda of 2019.To shore up the real economy especially advanced manufacturing, policies will focus on enhancing fair competition and vitality of market entities while lowering corporate costs."One of the primary tasks is to offer the private sector substantial support," he said, referring to measures including addressing financing difficulties.China will push for significant improvement in business environment across the nation by improving its environment rating scheme with Chinese characteristics more rapidly, he said.The country will improve foreign investment environment across the board and clear up restrictive regulations on foreign investment that go beyond the official negative list, according to He.Source: Invest in China

Global investors optimistic about Chinese economy in 2019

Standard Chartered stressed that undeniably China will be faced with stronger downward pressure in 2019, but observers should not be pessimistic about this.First, the scale and dividends of China’s economic restructuring should not be underestimated, the bank said, explaining that new economy, accounting for 15.7 percent of the country’s GDP, is to be a beneficiary of the restructuring.Besides new economy, retail trade, real estate, health care, commercial insurance, as well as other industries will all grow alongside consumption upgrades, and furthermore industrial upgrades will contribute to the growth of computer and electronic products, computer programming, and information technology.The Chinese economy will embrace a 30 percent or above increase if the efficacy of the abovementioned sectors is elevated to the level of developed economies, the bank added.In addition, the flexibility of the policies for macro-regulation should not be underestimated. Standard Chartered believes that China will be able to achieve growth of 6.4 percent, a figure higher than expectation.Aberdeen Standard Investments, a London-listed global asset manager, said it will invest more in the A-share market considering the change of China’s economic growth mode, relatively balanced risks, and the price advantage brought by the long-term investment of some excellent enterprises, though the prices of A-shares experienced a slide this year.Limited impact will be exerted on the Chinese economy because the growth mode has changed and the proportion of exports within GDP has continued to drop, Nicholas Yeo, head of China Equities at Aberdeen, was quoted as saying.The Chinese government has recently rolled out a series of reform measures and the policies will be continued before the economic fundamentals are obviously improved, according to Goldman Sachs. It believes that a drastic drop of the Chinese economy will not occur. Source: en.people.cn

Reform and opening-up to boost global economic growth, say experts

China's reform and opening-up will not only benefit the country and its people, but help contribute new growth momentum and facilitate changes to the global economy in many aspects, said officials and business leaders from home and abroad.The nation's new measures to support multilateralism and deep involvement in partner countries will help facilitate both goods and service trade activities, as well as infrastructure development and enable stronger connections, said Han Yong, commercial counselor at the department of outward investment and economic cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce.China Railway Rolling Stock Corp, the country's manufacturer of locomotives and rolling stock, plans to deploy more resources on operations including localized manufacturing, procurement, employment, services and management to drive growth in global markets, in particular those involved in the development of the Belt and Road Initiative.These moves will help the group to better integrate with local economy and coordinate its global resources after the company built a number of manufacturing bases in Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, India, Turkey and other countries over the past five years, said Lou Qiliang, vice-president of Beijing-headquartered CRRC.The group's overseas assets jumped from 3 billion yuan ($432 million) in 2013 to 34 billion yuan in 2017. It currently employs 57,000 people across its overseas operations, compared with 509 in 2013.China, now the second largest economy in the world, has helped power the world economy not only with the BRI, but with foreign aid into countries in need. Many developing countries are benefiting from Chinese loans and grants, both bilateral and multilateral, said Ali Ahmed, CEO of Bangladesh Foreign Trade Institute."The rise of China has, therefore, been a boon not only to China herself but also to the rest of the world, especially to the relatively poorer countries."He said the Chinese way of development, with no doubt, deserves admiration.China's contribution to global development has been unique, said Ahmed, who served in the Bangladeshi government for decades before joining the BFTI in 2015.Paradoxically, many of the present-day leaders in the Western world, once champions of free trade and globalization, are now working against it, he said."They have been advocating free trade and globalization so long as their goods and services could enter duty-free (zones) without much of competition from poorer economies," the expert said. "But when they started facing competition from their erstwhile importers of finished goods and services ... they are raising all kinds of barriers against them."Amid allegations that China only exports but does not import, China International Import Expo held in Shanghai this year is "a fitting reply," Ahmed said. "It ... witnessed a clear Chinese invitation to the others to export to their country. It has been a marvelous economic diplomacy on the part of China."The benefits China's reform and opening-up has brought to South Asia, especially to Bangladesh, have been and are to be immense, he said.A pointer to that is the opening-up of Chinese market for duty-free and quota-free entry of Bangladeshi goods, Ahmed added. Bangladesh, the largest least developed country (LDC) in terms of the size of its population and economy, enjoys such market access under a decision of the World Trade Organization."They will be on a reciprocal basis," Ahmed said. "At the moment, and for some more years to come, the Chinese policy of opening up her market to the LDCs will continue to be of great help to them. Bangladesh, as an LDC, will reap same benefits."China and Bangladesh have already opened discussions to arrive at a free-trade agreement, under which Bangladesh would continue to export its duty- and quota-free goods to China, according to information from the Ministry of Commerce."China's proposal to explore third-party market cooperation could bring benefits to both Western nations and developing countries in many parts of the world, without causing a clash of interests," said Chu Shijia, director-general at the ministry's comprehensive department.Source: China Daily

GDP growth expected to remain stable

Structural reforms to support economy despite headwinds, report saysChina’s GDP growth next year is expected to be stable at 6.3 percent, despite headwinds, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and economists suggested that the country should continue to press ahead with structural reforms to boost growth.Despite the global economic downturn and Sino-US trade conflicts, China’s GDP growth rate may reach 6.6 percent this year — meaning it would achieve its preset growth target of around 6.5 percent — and then in 2019 ease to 6.3 percent, according to the academy’s latest forecast, released in a blue book report on the economy on Monday.China is not expected to encounter any economic hard-landing, economists said at a forum organized by the top think tank on Monday.“The active promotion of a new round of reforms and opening-up as well as the Belt and Road Initiative will further stimulate internal and external demand next year,” said Lou Feng, the co-author of the report and a researcher at the Institute of Quantitative & Technological Economics at the academy. “China’s low unemployment rate and consumer inflation level will also play a key role in guaranteeing social stabilization and residential income growth.”The academy’s report, usually published at year’s end to forecast the economy’s performance in the following year, said China’s fixed-asset investment will remain stable next year as China will continue to use investments to prevent an economic downturn.Policymakers at the Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded on Friday, said the country will strengthen use of fiscal policy and increase infrastructure investments to shore up the economy. It will also promote urbanization and development of regional economic clusters, such as the Yangtze River Delta region, to create more demand for investment.Consumption also is expected to remain stable, the academy’s report said. The country has devised a series of policies such as personal tax cuts to encourage consumption, which will work to help increase retail sales, it said.Despite the uncertainties caused by the Sino-US trade disputes, China may continue to see exports increase as a result of its wider economic opening-up and deepening economic cooperation with countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, the report said.Lou said China’s retail sales could reach 40 trillion yuan ($5.8 trillion) this year and grow to 43.3 trillion yuan next year. Consumption is set to contribute 78.2 percent of GDP growth this year, the highest level since 2001, he said.“China’s economy will not suffer from a hard landing next year,” said Yang Yiyong, director of the Social Development Research Institution, part of the National Reform and Development Commission, a top economic regulatory body.Economists said that to ensure stable growth against internal and external headwinds, China needs to continue its structural reforms.“China should stick to reforms to boost growth,” said Han Wenxiu, deputy head of the office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, at a forum on Saturday.China should deepen reforms in State assets, finance, land, market entry and market regulation to promote competition and improve the systemic environment through creation of a level playing field, he said.The State Administration of Taxation said on Monday that it will “strictly implement tax cut policies” and resolutely prevent “excessive collection of taxes” to foster a law-based and equitable taxation environment.Source: China Daily