Foreign media's view of China's economy: "an irreplaceable market" in the eyes of many foreign enterprises

Surprise hidden in Yum! China's latest financial report: In the third quarter of this year, this international catering giant found that its restaurant profit margin was the highest in recent years.
Standard Chartered Bank uses "very good" to describe its recent business performance in China, and believes that this is mainly due to China's firm opening-up.
Recently, many overseas media believed that the current global transnational investment is sluggish and the economic recovery is weak. A China embracing the world with an open attitude has become a "haven" for multinational companies and an important driving force for business growth. China's big market is "irreplaceable".
The "development engine" of many multinational enterprises' global business
According to a column on the Chinese website of the Financial Times, Yum! China's net profit in the third quarter almost doubled to $206 million, and its restaurant profit margin jumped to 18.8% from 12.2% in the same period last year, the highest level since 2018.
Coincidentally, the performance report of BMW Group of Germany showed that the net profit in the third quarter of this year was 3.175 billion euros, up 22.9% year on year. Under the circumstances that the total sales volume of new cars dropped 0.9% year-on-year to 587744, and the sales volume of European market dropped 11.1%, the sales volume of Chinese market rose 5.7% against the trend. The Wall Street Journal reported that the outstanding performance of the Chinese market is one of the main drivers of BMW's profit growth.
The story of Yum! China and BMW is not an example. The booming Chinese market has increasingly become the global business development engine of many multinational enterprises.
The British Economist recently published an article entitled "Multinational companies find it hard to give up the Chinese market", which said that China's increasingly wealthy 1.4 billion residents have purchased a quarter of the world's clothing, nearly one third of the jewelry and handbags, two fifths of cars, and a considerable proportion of packaged food, beauty products, drugs and electronic products. China, with its huge manufacturing industry, is also the world's largest market for machine tools and chemical products and the largest buyer of construction equipment.
According to incomplete statistics, in 2021, the revenue of 13 multinational enterprises including Apple, BMW, Intel, Siemens, Tesla and Wal Mart in China will exceed 10 billion dollars. Among the US, European and Japanese companies that have released sales data, the total sales of the top 200 companies in China last year increased by nearly 70% compared with five years ago.
The Chinese market is not just a large company. Enterprises in different fields, scales and development stages can tap into rich business opportunities from China's development.
The Australian News Network quoted a report from a research institution that, despite the challenges, the opportunities for Australian SMEs to sell goods to China cannot be ignored. According to the report, "China is the world's largest and most dynamic consumer market. It is in a leading position in logistics and e-commerce innovation, and will only grow faster and faster in the future. By 2030, China is expected to have about 400 million upper middle and high-income families seeking high-quality products and services."
Bloomberg also reported that Australia has recognized the importance of Chinese consumers, from consumers who buy high-quality lobsters to generous tourists and international students. Mitchell Taylor, who runs a wine company, said that a market of China's size could not be replaced.
"China's economy is a great opportunity"
At the 5th China International Import Expo recently held in Shanghai, Amazon, an American e-commerce giant, announced that its first overseas bonded warehouse will be settled in Ningbo in 2023, so as to better serve the consumer demand of Chinese consumers for imported products.
According to customs data, the import and export of China's cross-border e-commerce has increased nearly 10 times in the past five years, reaching 1.92 trillion yuan in 2021, an increase of 18.6% over the previous year.
The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce is a strong evidence of China's high-level opening up. Thanks to China's opening up, foreign enterprises are sharing more new opportunities for China's development.
In 2018, China abolished the restriction on the proportion of foreign shares in new energy vehicles. Subsequently, Tesla became the first wholly foreign-owned vehicle manufacturing enterprise in China. Benefiting from the liberalization of foreign equity ratio restrictions in the financial sector, Credit Suisse has recently reached an agreement to acquire all its shares in China's securities joint ventures.
According to Bloomberg, the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank, Wen Tuosi, recently pointed out that the bank's recent 30% year-on-year performance growth was mainly due to China's continuous opening up.
Bloomberg quoted Axel Weber, chairman of the International Financial Association, former chairman of UBS Group and former governor of the German Central Bank, as saying that China's economy is still a great opportunity for Western enterprises. He said that the current trend of anti globalization, namely, trying to "decouple" from China's economy, would greatly hinder world economic growth, especially for developing economies.
Weber said, "Without China, the global economy cannot function normally."
Reuters reported that Kang Linsong, chairman and CEO of Mercedes Benz, publicly opposed alienating China and said that the idea of "giving up China" was unthinkable.
"We see strong growth prospects"
Many foreign media reported that many multinationals are optimistic about China's economy and increase investment in China. According to the US consumer news and business channel, heads of several international financial institutions expressed their optimism about China's growth prospects at the International Financial Leaders Investment Summit held in Hong Kong.
Noel Quinn (Qi Yaonian), CEO of HSBC Group, said that the COVID-19 would pass, and eventually the Chinese economy would rebound strongly. "We are very patient and will continue to invest in China. We see a strong growth prospect, because the consumer market here will become stronger in the next decade."
Quinn said that HSBC would continue to invest in wealth management business in China, Singapore and India, and hoped to recruit about 3000 wealth managers in the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area in the short to medium term. Reuters recently reported that although Credit Suisse's transformation strategy led to layoffs in other regions, Liu Zhian, CEO of Credit Suisse Asia Pacific, said that Credit Suisse is promoting its expansion in China. In the next five years, the mainland of China and Hong Kong will be the regions with the strongest growth in the number of employees of the company in Asia.
In the face of the global economic downturn, the position of the Chinese market has become more prominent, and investors and manufacturers have "voted with their feet".
The Wall Street Journal of the United States recently reported that as regional conflicts continue and signs of economic recession in Europe continue to grow, European automakers are turning to the United States and China to find opportunities.
The latest commercial market outlook report released by Boeing in October said that China will need 8458 new aircraft in the next 20 years, and supporting commercial services worth more than 545 billion dollars to support the growing fleet.
"China is not a risk, but an opportunity." The Wall Street Journal quoted Nicolas Peter, BMW's chief financial officer, as saying.