Qingdao, located in Shandong Province, China. For three days from the 10th to the 12th, the 4th Qingdao Multinational Enterprise Leaders’ Summit was held in Qingdao, well-known to Koreans for ‘beer’.
During this Qingdao Summit, a total of 800 people, including 422 business leaders from 36 countries, including 139 Global 500 companies and 283 industry leading companies, as well as international organization officials and key figures, attended. In terms of business people alone, 407 people attended from global companies, of which 16 were at the global representative level, 33 were at the global vice president level, 100 were at the Chinese regional representative level, and 151 were at the Chinese regional vice president level.
In addition, 30 events were held on 14 topics, and Chinese central ministries such as the Ministry of Commerce and Shandong Province leadership met with key figures from multinational companies who attended the meeting and had practical exchanges.
Recently, as the Chinese government has been rolling out related policies to increase the level of openness to the outside world, this summit, held under the theme of ‘Multinational Companies and China’, continued to express China’s will to speed up openness to the outside world.
“The huge domestic market formed by China’s economic growth will create more new opportunities for global development and provide development opportunities for multinational companies,” Hao Mingjin, vice chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, said at the opening ceremony.
The Multinational Enterprise Leaders Summit, held for the first time in 2019, is one of the largest events held by Shandong Province.
At the first summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping personally sent a congratulatory message, adding strength to the summit by saying, “Multinational companies are powerful drivers of economic globalization and an important force in promoting the construction of an open world economy.”
Each province in China has a ‘province’, which is the center of the province’s politics, economy, and culture. In the case of Shandong Province, Jinan is the provincial capital, but Qingdao is recognized as the representative city of Shandong Province in terms of the degree of openness to the outside world. For this reason, it is said that some people call Qingdao Chinese Qingdao rather than Shandong Qingdao.
Night view of Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. ⓒ News1 Vice Minister of Commerce Guo Tingting, who attended the meeting, said, “The Qingdao Multinational Enterprise Leaders’ Summit is an important window to announce that China will promote a higher level of openness to the outside world, and has become an annual event for greater communication and development among multinational enterprises.” “He said.
According to the organizers, the projects signed during this summit greatly exceed the scale of previous summits. A total of 194 foreign investment projects were signed during this period, with the total investment amount reaching $20.6 billion.
It also attracted investors from more than 20 countries and regions, including Korea, the United States, Japan, and Germany. The Qingdao Multinational Enterprise Summit served as a ‘bridge’ for investment and cooperation.
Chen Fei, head of the Shandong Province Commerce Department, said, “The international influence of the summit continues to increase, and together with it, confidence in jointly building an open world economy has been solidified.”
(Qingdao = News 1)
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.