Shanghai sees booming start of foreign investment in new year

Photo taken on April 11, 2022 shows a view of Pudong New Area in east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Chen Jianli)

East China's Shanghai has recently become home to 20 new regional headquarters of multinational corporations and 10 R&D centers, most of which are of the city's key industrial sectors such as biomedicine, intelligent manufacturing and high-end services, reported Shanghai Securities News on Thursday.

"Shanghai is not only a city of China, but of the world," said Lei Kaiting, general manager of Beiersdorf Group's China corporate affairs department. The German skincare company has recently been approved to set up a foreign R&D center in Shanghai, which will be Beiersdorf's second largest R&D center in the world, right after its headquarters in Hamburg, Germany.

Beiersdorf will further increase its R&D investment in Shanghai and other areas in China, making more efforts in developing technological skin care, green and low-carbon production, as well as talent introduction, according to the company.

Siemens Healthineers has recently upgraded its previous "China headquarters" in Shanghai into "greater China headquarters", on a par with the original headquarters of the Asia-Pacific region.

An innovation lab of Schneider Electric on key power source has also been initiated in Shanghai, providing integrated support to promote the company's global R&D strategy on key power source and energy storage systems.

By the end of 2022, Shanghai has been home to 891 regional headquarters of multinational corporations and 531 foreign R&D centers. The city saw a record actual use of foreign investment of 23.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.