BUSINESSES PROFIT FROM BRI WITH OVERSEAS ORDERS

Companies based in Youxian district feeling the benefits of international economic bonds

The Belt and Road Initiative has brought business opportunities to companies in Youxian district of Mianyang, Sichuan province, and provided a boost to the district's opening-up, local officials said.

A shipment of reflective ceramic tiles from Sichuan Jiebang Science & Technology, a high-tech company in the district, arrived in the port city of Ashdod, Israel, in mid-March. They will be used in building an urban tunnel in Jerusalem.

At the same time, another batch of Jiebang ceramic tiles was being shipped to the United States for a local product show.

The ceramic tile, designed by Jiebang, won the 2016 Red Dot award - which is dubbed as the Academy Awards in the industrial design field - after competing with some 10,000 entries from 57 countries and regions.

The design can increase the brightness of tunnel walls and road surfaces and therefore reduce safety risks. In 2018, it won the China Red Star Design Award, a top industrial design prize in the country.

At Jiebang, workers are busy fulfilling the contracts signed by European buyers.

The orders placed in early April from Spain have taken up most of the company's production, its executives said.

Despite Jiebang's production lines being upgraded several times, its production still cannot meet the growing demand from home and abroad, said Han Yuping, one of the executives.

Another company in the district, TRX, is also riding high with increased orders from BRI-related countries and regions.

The manufacturer of capacitors has obtained contracts from major industrial players, including telecommunications giant Huawei and South Korean electronics maker Samsung.

From Samsung, TRX has won orders worth $11 million this year.

"We introduced three new production lines in 2018, which helped to generate 80 million yuan ($11.9 million) in output value a year," said Liu Shijun, general manager of the company.

"This year, we plan to add another five to 10 production lines, in a bid to increase our output value to 120-150 million yuan," Liu said.

Local companies' tech expertise is the key to their overseas expansion. Mianyang Weibo Electronic is a shining example.

A flagship rail project in Kenya began in 2017. The Chinese-built railway links Mombasa, a coastal city in Kenya, and its capital city of Nairobi. Weibo Electronic provided key equipment to the project, including all the sensors used in the railway signal microcomputer monitoring system.

Focusing on research and development in the sectors of rail, nuclear power and telecommunications, the company has grown from a device manufacturer to a symmetric solution supplier.

Weibo Electronic has increased its R&D efforts and developed a monitoring system that can detect radiation contamination within five seconds.

"A series of systems made in our company have been used in nuclear power projects in countries and regions involved in the BRI," said He Siqiao, an executive with the company's technological center.

In addition to the manufacturing industry, the food sector in the district is also bustling with machines.

Some 1,500 boxes of corn snacks were shipped from Corndo Food to Syria in August 2018. It took more than a month for the shipment to arrive.

It was the first time that the snack provider had exported. The BRI is advancing the puffed corn company's exploring in overseas markets, its spokesman said.

Sustained innovation

Home to three national-level research institutes, Youxian boasts some 80,000 tech professionals from different sectors. They provide support for local businesses' innovation.

Youxian, a major district of Mianyang, is located at the core of China Science and Technology City. It has been designated as the only green industry demonstration area in western China.

"Either to encourage local companies to go abroad or attract investment projects from overseas, the government needs to create a business-friendly environment," said Jiang Bin, Party chief of the district.

"The key is to satisfy the needs of entrepreneurs and other types of professionals," he said.

Yuan Changhong, a senior engineer with the Mianyang subsidiary of Sichuan Yahua Industrial Group, worked in Wuhan, Hubei province, before he took the current position. He is leading his team in Youxian, seeking to make breakthroughs in research.

The district government provides high-level tech professionals with green service cards, which can help with medical care and children's schooling, Yuan said.

"All such measures have given me faith in my career prospects in Youxian," he said. "We really appreciate the high-quality services and favorable policies offered by the local government, which help us to settle in the district for a better future."

The district government has earmarked a special fund of 10 million yuan to foster local professionals and attract experts and specialists from other regions and abroad.

Local authorities have also rolled out incentive policies to encourage tech startups, as part of their drive to improve the district's reform and opening-up.

Last year, 29 high-level personnel were attracted to Youxian and two provincial-level research centers headed by academicians were set up there. They helped the district's GDP to increase 9.2 percent from a year earlier to 24.71 billion yuan in 2018.

The government has also streamlined administrative approval procedures, integrating more than 20 departments into one center to offer one-stop services.

The move has reduced the approval time to less than 60 days, local officials said.

Xu Hong, a technological officer at a local high-tech company, said Youxian's efficient administrative services and business-friendly climate promoted his company's decision to move to the district.

Construction on an intelligent logistics industrial park, funded by the company, began at Youxian in March. The new facility will combine R&D, production and sales.

Youxian ranked 25th among China's top 100 county-level governments in terms of administrative services in February 2018, according to the local government.

(China Daily 04/27/2019 page30)