China Premier Welcomes Foreign Tech Investment

Chinese Premier Li Qiang met with Samsung chairman Jay Y Lee in Seoul and welcomed further investment by the company, ahead of a trilateral summit in the South Korean capital this week of leaders from China, Japan and South Korea, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

The meeting is the first of its kind in about four and a half years and comes as the three countries make efforts to retain stable economic relations amidst pressure from the US that has made it more complex to do business in China or with Chinese companies.

Li, the country’s second-highest ranking official, called on the two countries to strengthen cooperation areas such as high-end manufacturing, new energy, artificial intelligence (AI), bio-medicine and other fields, Xinhua reported.

He said the country would always be open to foreign companies and would takes steps to improve confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.

‘Win-win’

In his meeting with Lee he called Samsung “a vivid epitome of the mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation and development between China and South Korea”.

Samsung over the past six years has invested $24 billion (£18.8bn) in the Chinese market, a company executive last November told state-run China Daily.

“Foreign-funded enterprises are an indispensable force for China’s development and China’s mega-market will always be open to foreign-funded companies,” Li reportedly said.

China will take steps including expanding market access to improve the business environment so that foreign companies “can rest assured in their investment and development in China”, he said.

Smartphone production

“China welcomes South Korean companies including Samsung to continue to expand investment and cooperation in China,” he added.

Samsung plans to increase the number of smartphones it manufactures in China through joint development manufacturers (JDM) from 4.4 million units to 6.7 million units, while raising its overall smartphone production target from 253 million units to 270 million units, South Korean news site theelec.net reported, citing unnamed sources.

The company uses JDM partners such as Wintech to produce lower-end smartphones in China, with the proportion produced by such firms rising from 7 percent in 2019 to 25 percent this year.