With the US-China tariff war still in progress, Shanghai City managed to achieve an impressive growth rate in the first half of 2018, and it looks like the trend will continue to be so as the local government pushes new economic upgrading and restructuring.
According to the latest financial data cited over at South China Morning Post (SCMP), Shanghai saw an 18.1 percent increase to over $20 billion-worth of foreign capital inflow in the first six months of the year. In this period alone, the city signed over 2,000 foreign business contracts, which is a staggering development compared to last year's drastic decline.
Tang Huihao, the city's statistics bureau chief, confirmed on a statement made on Tuesday: "This year [we have seen] an improving trend of attracting foreign investments. Citywide, both contracted and actual foreign investments reversed from declines seen a year earlier."
Tang attributed this favorable growth to Shanghai's aggressive implementation of Beijing's open market policies.
The Xi Jinping administration had earlier expressed its leniency on foreign investments pouring into the country by offering a more loosened trade restrictions, lessened paperwork hurdles, among others. These are just but a few manifestations of Beijing's efforts to offset the negative effects of Trump's high tax policies imposed on China's goods.
The deputy went on to point out Shanghai's remarkable growth rate which is actually slightly faster when compared to the national level. This is due to the city's economic restructuring and upgrading program that encourages new enterprises to thrive. A few examples are internet services, transportation, delivery services, as well as auto manufacturing.
A report from Financial Tribune revealed Shanghai's "accelerated efforts" to ease out the restrictions for the foreign auto manufacturing sector to penetrate the city.
One of the car companies who outright enjoyed these new changes is Tesla. Citing the deputy director of Shanghai Commission of Economy and Technology, Huang Ou, it was found out that the municipal government has an all-out support for the Tesla Project to kickstart its operation as soon as possible.
"In line with state plans, we will speed up the cancellation of foreign ownership restrictions in the car manufacturing sector," the city economic director was further quoted as saying.
Tesla, led by Elon Musk as its Chief Executive Officer, has long been eyeing to establish a satellite factory in China. The goal is to speed up and double the size of its output as the world's demand for electric cars increasingly grow.
