Multinational executives express commitment to Chinese market

Will Song, global senior vice-president and China chairman at Johnson & Johnson, said that the Chinese market is increasingly becoming an important growth engine and innovation hub in Johnson & Johnson's global business portfolios and Johnson & Johnson's long-term commitment to the Chinese market remains unchanged.

"We continue to invest in innovation to lead and support the high-quality development of the healthcare industry. We are pleased to see that China strives to create a first-class business environment that is market-oriented, rule-of-law and internationalized, making greater efforts to attract foreign investment, and continuing to promote high-level opening up," Song said.

"We believe that China's high-quality economic development will bring multifaceted opportunities for multinational enterprises, and we look forward to China's further opening-up and continuous emphasis and recognition of innovation value," he said.

"With its market size, economic resilience and population, China remains an important strategic market in Johnson & Johnson's global business portfolio, and we are here for the long-term," he added.

The number of newly established foreign-invested enterprises reached 37,814 in the first three quarters of 2023 in China, up 32.4 percent year-on-year, data from the Ministry of Commerce showed on Friday.

Structure and quality of the FDI has seen much improvement, despite foreign direct investment into the Chinese mainland in terms of actual use dropped 8.4 percent year-on-year to 919.97 billion yuan over the period, the data showed.

The FDI used in China's manufacturing sector amounted to 262.41 billion yuan during the nine month period, with an increase of 2.4 percent on a yearly basis. High-tech manufacturing saw a remarkable growth of 12.8 percent year-on-year.

Justin Yifu Lin, dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University, said that the Chinese economy, with strong endogenous strength from factors like an enormous domestic market and increasing innovation capability, is well poised to rebound and continuously have "dynamic" growth, making great contribution to the world economic development.

A former senior vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank, Lin expects the Chinese economy to grow by 5.5 percent, or even 6 percent, this year, and continue to be a major driver of global growth.