Most foreign-funded enterprises resume work in Chinese manufacturing hub

About 91 percent of the top 300 foreign-funded import and export enterprises in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan, the country's manufacturing hub, had resumed work as of Feb. 23, local authorities announced Monday.

A total of 5,791 foreign-funded enterprises had resumed work as of Sunday, including 60 percent of large and medium-sized ones, according to the Dongguan municipal government.

In general, 8,876 industrial enterprises, or 83.3 percent of all industrial enterprises with an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan (about 2.8 million U.S. dollars), had resumed work in Dongguan.

Lei Huiming, a researcher with the Dongguan bureau of commerce, said that work resumption was generally delayed due to the novel coronavirus outbreak, which put pressure on some enterprises' export orders in the short term.

Lei said the total number of orders dropped by around 10 percent to 15 percent from a year ago, adding that rising costs of labor, raw materials and logistics have also increased operating expenses of the enterprises.

The Dongguan Customs said foreign trade in the first two months registered a year-on-year decline, but cross-border e-commerce has maintained a high growth rate.

The total value of cross-border e-commerce trade in January was 1.28 billion yuan in Dongguan, up 15.6 times year on year, ranking first in China.

The city has rolled out a slew of supportive policies to lower operating costs, ease cash shortages and bring in more orders amid the epidemic for local companies.