Aerial photo taken on Nov. 5, 2020 shows the view of the Lujiazui area in Pudong, east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Ding Ting)
BEIJING, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- The outsourcing cooperation between China and countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has continued to grow although facing the COVID-19 pandemic, reported comnews.cn, a news website under the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), on Wednesday.
Statistics from MOC showed that the executed value of offshore outsourcing undertaken by China from Belt and Road countries registered 136.06 billion yuan in 2020, up 8.9 percent year on year.
So far, China has signed 205 cooperation documents on jointly building the BRI with 171 countries and international organizations, and many Belt and Road countries are located in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
From January to November 2020, the executed value of service outsourcing undertaken by Chinese enterprises from the Belt and Road countries increased by 6.8 percent to 64.99 billion yuan, with 36.51 billion yuan from ASEAN, an increase of 7.6 percent.
The U.S., Hong Kong and the European Union (EU) were the top three markets for China to undertake and execute service outsourcing in 2020, with executed value taking up 53.8 percent of the total.
During this period, the executed value of service outsourcing undertaken by China from the U.S. recorded 155.06 billion yuan, up 17 percent year on year, from Hong Kong and EU recorded 119.83 billion yuan and 117.68 billion yuan, up 5.7 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively.
This development trend is expected to continue in 2021.
MOC and other central authorities have recently jointly issued a circular on promoting the high-quality development of outbound design consulting.
Outbound design consulting is a crucial part of foreign contracted projects, while the Belt and Road countries are the focus of China's outbound investment and cooperation, and thus it is foreseeable that China's service outsourcing in planning, consulting, survey, design, cost, supervision, project management and operation and maintenance among other fields of these countries and regions may see a rapid growth, said Zheng Wei, a researcher with the Chinese Service Outsourcing Research Center affiliated to MOC.
As many of the Belt and Road countries are developing countries and emerging markets and China has certain comparative advantages in BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing) and KPO (Knowledge Processing Outsourcing) business, Chinese enterprises may undertake such business in these countries at a faster speed.
Zheng also noted that driven by these countries' demands for digital products and services, service outsourcing in digital industry might become the focus of cooperation between China and these countries.
(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)
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