Expansion drive: Workers produce furniture at a factory in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. The government of Wenzhou is promoting trade in the region and across the country, and beyond, for its local businesses. — AFP
BEIJING: With China encouraging local governments to play a bigger role in sustaining their foreign trade, Wenzhou, a coastal city in East China’s Zhejiang province, will further reinforce the resilience of its industrial chains and facilitate companies in securing more export orders, say market watchers and exporters.
As a major industrial and export hub in the Yangtze River Delta region, the city introduced an “industrial chain chief” scheme to ensure employment, the operation of its foreign trade sector and its industrial chains in May this year.
A total of 20 government officials have been serving as chiefs of various industrial chains to help companies, in particular small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to seek foreign orders and expand their sales channels in both home and global markets.
Some districts and economic zones in the city also have their own key industrial chains and have implemented the scheme together.
Apart from participating in different national and global trade fairs, these industrial chain chiefs led companies to take part in 77 docking activities with various parties across China and signed 221 projects with a total order volume of 39.3 billion yuan (RM24bil) by Nov 27.
The programme served and benefitted 8,357 local companies, with more than 90% being SMEs, according to Wenzhou’s government.
For instance, eight Wenzhou-based auto parts manufacturers have become suppliers to domestic electric carmaker Neta, a brand owned by Tongxiang, Zhejiang-based Hozon Auto, after the city government invited the automaker to Wenzhou in July.
Dai Bingjie, a sales manager at Qiaoluming Technology Co Ltd, a Wenzhou-based auto parts manufacturer, said the company, as one of those suppliers, gained 100 million yuan (RM63mil) in new output value from this partnership in 2022.
The scheme aims to connect the key links of the upstream and downstream industrial chains and forge a long-term mechanism by participating in the communication and coordination of related businesses, said Zhang Yili, a professor at the school of business of Wenzhou University.
Similar views were expressed by Yu Xinchen, deputy head of the Wenzhou branch of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, who said these moves will offer precise support for Wenzhou’s exporters to better understand the favourable terms of multilateral and bilateral free-trade deals such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement.
It will also develop emerging markets and boost the city’s strength in growing new foreign trade formats, including cross-border eCommerce business, market procurement, foreign trade-related services, bonded maintenance and remanufacturing. — China Daily/ANN
