Beijing E-Town recently released 20 measures to enhance services for foreign enterprises, strengthening the supply of innovative elements and providing such innovative services as "finding markets for foreign enterprises" and "recruiting talents for foreign enterprises".

As the main base for high-end industries in Beijing, Beijing E-Town has attracted more than 1,100 foreign-invested enterprises, with actual foreign investment of $11 billion. By 2022, the total industrial output value of Beijing E-Town had reached 537.11 billion yuan ($75.13 billion), with foreign-funded enterprises accounting for 69 percent of the total industrial output value.

How does the Beijing E-Town attract foreign-funded enterprises to settle in the zone?

From the aspect of opening up advanced manufacturing, efforts will be made to comprehensively cancel restrictions on access to foreign investment in the manufacturing sector and to implement pilot policies for high-standard innovative opening-up systems.

Pilot policies for innovation in such areas as re-manufacturing and overseas professional organization certification will be promoted.

In terms of opening up the high-end service industry, greater efforts will be made to upgrade the policy pilot of the comprehensive opening-up demonstration zone for the service industry in Beijing, supporting the development of investment and trade facilitation, cross-border data transactions, modern business and financial services, and other formats.

In particular, Beijing E-Town will take the lead in expanding the application of the "white list" system in the field of biopharmaceuticals, encourage foreign-invested enterprises to conduct clinical trials on cell and gene therapy drugs that have been listed overseas in China in accordance with the law, and lead the promotion and application of optimized policies for the registration of medicines that have been transferred from overseas to China for production and listing.

In the future, efforts will also be made to provide such innovative services as "finding markets for foreign enterprises", "recruiting talents for foreign enterprises", "finding resources for foreign enterprises", "finding partners for foreign enterprises", and "finding capital for foreign enterprises".

The area aims to become the preferred platform for foreign-funded enterprises to participate in China's modernization and a strategic platform through which enterprises can enjoy the dividends of China's development.

The plan proposes to promote the integration of foreign-related approval matters into a single, one-stop, and one-window integrated processing system, to achieve "one-time processing" for high-frequency matters such as tax exemption for imported and exported equipment, and identification of Hong Kong, Macao, and overseas Chinese identities.

It also calls for the establishment of a round-the-clock multilingual foreign-related service hotline and the implementation of a "corporate steward" responsibility system for major projects.

Meanwhile, Beijing E-Town will deepen its integration with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA).