Facts & figures

The provincial statistics show that Jiangsu registered paid-in foreign investment of USD 28.38 billion in 2020, an increase of 8.6% over 2019. According to Ministry of Commerce, the paid-in foreign investment in Jiangsu reached USD 23.52 billion in 2020, up by 3.2% year-on-year (RMB 163.14 billion, up by 5.1%), accounting for 16.3% of China’s total and maintaining the lead nationally, which demonstrated the remarkable achievement of Jiangsu as a major province, in terms of both opening up to and stabilising foreign investment in 2020. In the face of the complex and severe international economic environment compounded by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Provincial Department of Commerce, under the strong leadership of CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee and the Jiangsu Government, worked with all relevant local departments to coordinate inter-departmental and bottom-up efforts in earnestly fulfilling the tasks of ensuring stability on the six fronts and security in the six areas, rolling out the all-round “campaign of protecting the market entities of foreign trade and capital with the focus on stabilising foreign trade export and the industrial and supply chains” and stepping up policy support.

With that, Jiangsu bucked the overall trend of a sharp drop in the global cross-border direct investment, with its paid-in foreign investment taking the national lead and witnessed steady progress in terms of quality. The industrial and supply chains that exist to support foreign investment remained stable, thus hitting the goal of being in the leading position in terms of scale and of improving the structure. Paid-in foreign investment in the manufacturing sector amounted to almost 30% of the national and 40% of the provincial total. Foreign-invested projects with paid-in capital of more than USD 30 million accounted for almost 60% of the provincial total and the paid-in capital of projects with additional investment accounted for nearly 30% of the provincial total.

Last year bore witness to further improvements in the structure of foreign investment in Jiangsu. The province’s paid-in foreign investment in manufacturing amounted to USD 9.18 billion, accounting for 39% of the provincial total foreign investment, 17.5 percentage points higher than the national total. A modern service sector proved to be the leading force in attracting foreign investment. The scientific research and technological service industry and the technological promotion and application service industry realised a year-on-year increase of 34.4% and 51.1%, respectively, last year.

The main sources of foreign investment remained stable. Paid-in investment from Hong Kong reached USD 18.5 billion, an increase of 23.4% from 2019, which was 65.2% of the total. Hong Kong thus continued to be the biggest source of foreign investment in Jiangsu. The investments from Japan and South Korea accounted for 7.7% of the provincial total, and those from the Belt and Road Initiative countries and regions achieved a year-on-year increase of 12.8%, amounting to 5.7% of the total.

The leading role of key regions has been further leveraged. Suzhou and Nanjing saw a year-on-year increase of 20.0% and 10.1%, respectively, in paid-in foreign investment, up by 1.8 and 0.2 percentage points.

Southern, central and northern Jiangsu made concerted efforts, with the paid-in foreign investment of the south reaching USD 17.18 billion, up by 10.9%, accounting for 60.5% of the total; that of the central region was USD 5.67 billion, up 3.6%, accounting for 20% of the total; and that of the north was USD 5.52 billion, up 7.4%, accounting for 19.5% of the total.

Large projects financed by foreign investment and those with added capital grew rapidly. In 2020, foreign-invested projects with paid-in capital of more than USD 30 million accounted for 59.6% of the provincial total foreign investment, an increase of 5 percentage points over the previous year. Altogether, there were 1,413 projects with added capital, up by 14.0% year-on-year, which registered a total paid-in investment of USD 7.83 billion, up by 28.4%, taking up 27.6% of the provincial total of paid-in foreign investment. LG Chemistry, XPT Nanjing E-Powertrain Technology, AAC Technologies, SK Battery, Peijia Medical, Envision Group and other projects all attracted paid-in investment of over USD 100 million in cumulative terms.

The headquarters of foreign-invested companies settled in Jiangsu at a faster pace. A total of 36 regional headquarters and functional institutions of multinational companies were registered for the first time in the province, including 22 regional headquarters and 14 functional institutions. Among them were big names such as Daikin Fluro-chemicals, Honeywell, Philips and Danfoss. 

Eastern China’s Jiangsu province saw its foreign trade grow by 2.6% year-on-year to a record high of RMB 4.45 trillion (about USD 688.9 billion) in 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, according to customs figures.

Of the total, Jiangsu’s exports hit RMB 2.74 trillion in 2020, up 0.9% year-on-year, while imports totalled RMB 1.7 trillion, up 5.5%.

The province’s trade volumes with the European Union, the United States, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, South Korea and Japan accounted for 62.9% of its total, while its trade with Belt and Road Initiative countries rose by 1.9% to about RMB 1.1 trillion in 2020.

Private enterprises continued to play an important role in driving the province’s foreign trade last year, contributing a volume of about RMB 1.57 trillion, up 14.7% over the previous year.