Why focus on the manufacturing industry when strengthening the attraction of foreign capital?

On October 25, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), together with five other departments, jointly released the "Several Policies and Measures on Promoting the Expansion of Foreign Investment with Emphasis on Manufacturing Industry, Stabilizing the Quantity and Improving the Quality", focusing on attracting foreign investment in manufacturing industry. The 15 measures include implementing the negative list, facilitating personnel exchanges, supporting the listing of foreign enterprises, and optimizing the structure of foreign investment. What role can these measures play in attracting foreign investment? How to implement it? News 1+1 invited Zhang Yansheng, the chief researcher of China International Economic Exchange Center, to pay attention to attracting foreign capital, how to "improve quality and increase"?
Why focus on the manufacturing industry when strengthening the attraction of foreign capital?
Zhang Yansheng, Chief Researcher of China International Economic Exchange Center: In 2021, China's manufacturing added value will be close to 30%, ranking first in the world. The second to fifth place in the world are the United States, Japan, Germany and India. China's value-added data is close to the sum of these four countries. However, there is a problem that we should attach great importance to. Last year, foreign direct investment in our manufacturing industry fell below 20%. We have always said that we should firmly grasp the solid foundation for the development of the manufacturing industry. If the proportion of foreign capital in the manufacturing industry continues to decline, it will have a long-term impact on our next manufacturing industry from large to strong.
How to implement the negative list of foreign investment is the key
Zhang Yansheng, Chief Researcher of China Center for International Economic Exchanges: The negative list of our foreign-invested enterprises, whether nationwide or in the pilot free trade zone, has now been reduced to 31 and 27. The rule of "can do anything without prohibition" has been made very clear and in place, and great efforts have been made. The most important issue here is how to put these good measures into practice, promote the modernization of the governance system and governance capacity of foreign investors, improve the investment environment, and truly put the system and terms that can benefit foreign investment in all aspects of foreign-funded enterprises.
What is the significance of supporting foreign-invested enterprises to be listed on A-shares?
Zhang Yansheng, Chief Researcher of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges: From the perspective of the direction of national reform, we should always adhere to the financial service for the real economy. In fact, many foreign-invested enterprises have become an important part of China's real economy in the past 40 years of reform and opening up. The other aspect is to encourage foreign-invested enterprises to list on China's stock market, list on the third board and issue credit bonds. These measures are conducive to promoting the internationalization of China's capital market, promoting the opening of our capital market, and promoting our capital market to play a more important role in the future Chinese path to modernization.
To attract foreign investment, what weaknesses do we need to complement in our business environment?
Zhang Yansheng, Chief Researcher of China Center for International Economic Exchanges: We can see that China's business environment ranked 90th in the world in 2015 and has improved to 31th in 2019, but we have four weaknesses.
First, our credit ranked 80 in the world in 2019;
Second, our tax payment ranks 105 in the world;
Third, our cross-border trade ranks 56th in the world;
Fourth, we ranked 51st in terms of enterprise exit mechanism.
Therefore, these four weaknesses are our next step. However, we can see that the World Bank is making a new assessment method for business environment - business environment BEE (business friendly environment). The first global business environment report of BEE standard will be released in the fourth quarter of next year, which is also an opportunity and challenge for us to optimize business environment. (CCTV News Client)