Chinese official calls for Japanese investment, reaffirming vow to widen market access

The remarks were made as Chinese authorities mourned Hu Youping, the woman who died while trying to stop a knife attack at a school bus stop in eastern China’s Suzhou last week.

Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei reported the vice-premier told Yohei – former speaker of Japan’s House of Representatives – that the attack, perpetrated by a Chinese man, was “incidental” and what Hu did to help the victims symbolised the two countries’ friendship. Local police have yet to disclose the attacker’s motives.

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The calls for Japanese investment came amid more rhetoric from Beijing about market access and a better business environment for foreign investors ahead of the highly-anticipated third plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee later this month.

The vice-premier also vowed to liberalise trade and investment from Switzerland while meeting visiting Swiss Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin in Beijing on Monday.

“[We should] further relax market access, remove unreasonable restrictions and turn China’s large market scale into a tangible advantage in attracting investment”, he said the same day at a separate event with Chinese officials.

At a meeting of the State Council – China’s cabinet – a few days prior, the country’s premier Li Qiang urged frontline workers to fulfil an earlier pledge to fully open the manufacturing sector to foreign capital and support domestic and foreign firms equally as they vie for a share of government procurement, public investment and China’s initiative promoting the mass trade-in of consumer goods.

He pledged to widen market entry in the service industry, as well as relax investment limits in medication and medical instruments.

“Everyone is welcome to invest in China and share in the dividends of China’s high-quality development,” Li told business representatives from home and overseas at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions in the northeastern port city of Dalian last week.

Zhao Gang, general manager of Sew Eurodrive (Suzhou) – a local office of the German gear and motor manufacturer – said the major challenge for the company’s future development in China lies in an unfair playing field.

“We hope there will be support for foreign-invested enterprises to enjoy the same rights as domestic enterprises to participate in government-backed equipment investment and construction projects, national and local government bidding projects, as well as those for the replacement and upgrading of state-owned enterprises’ equipment,” he said.

In the first five months of the year, China attracted 412.5 billion yuan (US$56.7 billion) worth of foreign direct investment, down over 28 per cent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

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