GBA | New round of foreign investment amid new five-year plan

The Fortune 500 company P&G has planned to launch an intelligent technology innovation center this year in Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong Province, another move of expanding the investment in the country after setting up a digital innovation center in 2017.
“The digital innovation center was established just within four months in Guangzhou. Since then, the center has invested 100 million U.S. dollars in strengthening innovation in big data, artificial intelligence and other areas,” said Matthew Price, president of P&G Greater China in an interview with Xinhua.
“Our business achievements over the years have fully proved that P&G’s choice of long-term investment and development in Guangzhou is a very correct decision,” Price noted.
P&G is an example of global leading companies ramping up investment in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and beyond in recent years.

EXPANDING INVESTMENT
P&G, one of the first Fortune 500 companies to invest in Guangzhou, established its first joint venture and production base in 1988, which was put into production two years later.Following more than three decades of development, China has become P&G’s second-largest market in the world after the United States and P&G’s largest e-commerce market.
“About 10% of our business in the United States is done through e-commerce, while the number in China is 45 percent,” said Price. “The innovation in big data and artificial intelligence will help us better serve the consumers in the Internet era.”
Like P&G, a growing number of foreign companies are now beginning to set up R&D and innovation centers in the Greater Bay Area.
In January, NCS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Fortune 500 company SingTel Group, launched NEXT Shenzhen Innovation Centre (SIC), its first innovation center in China. Siemens Energy also launched an innovation center for advanced energy technologies in Shenzhen in January.
“The new innovation center in Shenzhen is another lighthouse project to promote the China-EU green partnership and digital partnership,” said Christian Bruch, CEO of Siemens Energy AG, adding that “this will bring us closer to the most dynamic energy market and, together with Chinese partners, create technologies and innovations that have an industrial and social impact.”
Meanwhile, since the Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was released in February 2019, more and more multinationals have moved their headquarters or regional centers to this more inter-connected area.
In January, New World Development Co., Ltd., one of the largest real estate developers in Hong Kong, signed a cooperation agreement with the Guangzhou municipal government to settle the headquarters of New World China, its flagship property arm, in the city, marking the company’s new stage of layout in the Greater Bay Area.
AstraZeneca, a multinational pharmaceutical company, will also establish its south China headquarters in Guangzhou this year, with a focus on R&D, operation management and innovation incubation in the Area. MDT/Xinhua