Reform and opening-up to attract more Dutch investment

China's push to upgrade its industrial structure and further open up its market - ensuring free and inclusive global trade and sharing the benefits with other countries - will attract more investment from the Netherlands in the long term.

The funding will mainly be made in the chemical, agricultural and manufacturing sectors, according to leading businesspeople and academics.

The opportunities come from China's ongoing reforms to build a new economic focus in the country. It has set goals to improve the market and policy environment for foreign direct investment, leading to "higher quality" foreign capital.

"Biomedicines, new materials, high-end equipment, and science and technology services will be the hot areas for businesses from the Netherlands to invest in China in the next stage, as the Asian country experiences a diversification of its innovative economic structure and an acceleration of industrial upgrading," said Sun Fuquan, a researcher at the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development.

Following the acquisition of Rainbow Biotechnology Co Ltd (China) in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region last November, Royal DSM, the Dutch life and materials sciences company, will launch a new DSM innovation center in Tongxiang, Zhejiang province in East China this year.

"DSM is on the journey from 'good to great' - a key initiative of which was to experiment with a governance model that differs from what multinational companies generally employ," said Gong Xiangwei, president of DSM Hydrocolloids.

Gong said the innovation center will strengthen DSM's innovation capabilities, enhance its intimacy with customers and further improve work efficiency.

Another Dutch company on the move in China is AkzoNobel, a multinational that manufactures paints and performance coatings and produces specialty chemicals for both industry and consumers worldwide.

The company expects its business growth in the Chinese market to "maintain the current momentum" in the future.

China is one of the company's most important markets, as it accounts for approximately 12 percent of its total revenue each year, said Lin Liangqi, president of AkzoNobel China.

"We are benefiting from China's economic growth," Lin said. "We have been growing at double-digit rates in the past decade," he added, without providing a specific figure.

Xia Youfu, executive director of the strategy center for China's Open Economy and International Technology Cooperation at the University of International Business and Economics, said traditional and other fast-growing industries would continue to remain attractive fields of investment for the Netherlands.

(China Daily 04/10/2018 page7)