SHANGHAI, May 27 (Xinhua) – Nantong, a city in east China's Jiangsu province, will redouble its efforts to further cooperation with Japanese-funded enterprises in an attempt to push its economic and trade cooperation with Japan to a new level.
Xu Huimin, mayor of Nantong City, will pay a visit to Japan from May 28-31 to carry out a series of economic and trade exchange activities.
Nantong is set to focus on strengthening cooperation with Japanese-funded enterprises in advanced manufacturing, coastal port industries and modern service industries, and quicken the pace to build itself into the gathering place of Japanese-funded enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta region.
As a matter of fact, Japan has become the second largest source of foreign investment and the fourth largest trading partner of Nantong.
At present, Nantong is home to 527 Japanese-funded enterprises, ranking third in Jiangsu in terms of the number of Japanese-funded firms. They include 17 Fortune Global 500 companies, of which Nantong COSCO KHI Ship Engineering Co.,Ltd. (NACKS) has become China's first ship intelligent manufacturing demonstration enterprise and TORAY Fibers Research Centre is identified as one of functional R&D institutions of multinational companies in Jiangsu.
In recent years, Japanese-funded companies gained a strong foothold in Nantong by expanding investment channels and improving R&D and management levels. In the future, Nantong will give top priority to strengthening economic and trade cooperation and exchanges with Japanese-funded companies in a bid to further push forward its cooperation with Japan to a new level.
Nantong boasts an excellent geographical position, a vast market and unique logistics conditions. As an important intersection of the Belt and Road Initiative, Nantong has established economic and trade relations with 65 Belt and Road countries and regions.
In 2018, Nantong reported GDP of 842.7 billion yuan, ranking 19th in the country’s large and medium-sized cities and 7th in prefecture-level cities.
In the same year, the city chalked up a foreign trade volume of 38.6 billion US dollars.
At present, it has established sister-city relations with 24 foreign cities, including Japan's Toyohashi City.
In terms of resource reserve and industrial basis, Nantong has a strong complementarity and relevance with Japanese-funded enterprises and is expected to further enhance cooperation with these enterprises in four fields, such as coastal port industries, advanced manufacturing, technology and talents, and modern service industries.
Besides, the city will give full play to its location and resource value to enhance the supporting level of the upstream and downstream industrial chains, accelerate the gathering and development of Japanese-funded firms, and further improve its services in the fields of living, housing and education in a bid to support Japanese-funded enterprises to become bigger and stronger and help them further tap into the Chinese market.
(Edited by Yang Yifan, yangyifan@xinhua.org)
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