Datong hosts an investment promotion fair in May to draw investors from Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. [Photo by Ma Junhui for China Daily]

Officials in Shanxi province have learned that presenting unique selling points and highlighting local advantages are crucial to attracting and keeping long-term investors.

Bian Dan, an official at the investment bureau in the provincial capital of Taiyuan, recalled two unsuccessful cases earlier this year that promoted officials to rethink their pitch.

"We organized two promotion tours in Shanghai and Hangzhou in the first half of this year," Bian said. "We sent our invitations to targeted investors before we started, but only a few replied and even fewer showed up at the meetings. We wanted to draw in all kinds of investors but did not tell them what makes us stand out from other investment destinations."

A shift in strategy helped to attract investors by showing the comparative advantages of Taiyuan.

"For example, we began to highlight our six industry clusters, each with an output value of more than 100 billion yuan ($13.73 billion), in investment promotions," Bian said. "The scale of an industry is testimony to the fertile soil that makes it thrive, and the scale itself means huge opportunities for investors in the upstream and downstream of the chain."

The 100-billion-yuan mega industry clusters in Taiyuan include special metallic materials, new-generation information technology, new chemicals, advanced manufacturing, new energy and synthetic biology.

Bian also pointed out that unique policy incentives and tailored services are attractions for Taiyuan, by citing the case of investment by the Shanghai-based National Silicon Industry Group. In the negotiation stage, officials from Taiyuan told NSIG executives the city offers preferential electricity prices for emerging industry players, and ready-made standard plants to free startups from infrastructure construction allow for rapid operations. As a result, NSIG agreed in March to launch its semiconductor facility in Taiyuan.

In the northern Shanxi city of Datong, investment promotion officials are using its proximity to Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province to attract investors.

"We are capitalizing on our proximity to draw investors from Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei," said an official in Datong. "The three regions are planning to transfer part of their production capacities to neighboring areas."

Datong statistics show the city has signed agreements for 49 projects with businesses in the three regions in the first half of this year, with a pledged total investment of 32.85 billion yuan.

The city also has a unique offering to small investors in its booming daylily industry.

Daylily flowers are a popular food ingredient in China, and Shen Haijun, an official at the Datong investment promotion bureau, said the niche industry is showing strong growth potential as the city is one of the leading daylily production bases in China, with more than 170 enterprises engaged in the farming, processing and sales of the produce. Revenue from the industry chain totaled 4.2 billion yuan in 2022.

Meanwhile, the central Shanxi city of Jinzhong is using local enterprises' success stories to attract investors from across the country.

Wang Peng, head of the Jinzhong investment services center, said the city is an important manufacturing base in Shanxi with competitive strengths in eight emerging industries, including advanced manufacturing, automobiles, new energy and new materials.

"When receiving investigation tours by investors, we show them the leading enterprises in the segments," Wang said. "Their interactions with leading local players help them directly identify investment opportunities in their own industry chains."

Geely Jinzhong, a branch company of renowned domestic automaker Geely, is one such enterprise. Its production facility began operations in 2016 and to date it has produced more than 478,000 vehicles – an output worth about 71.2 billion yuan.

A company executive said the success of the facility has led to the formation of an automotive industrial park.

"We have attracted 60 suppliers and 27 downstream enterprises to settle in this industrial park, and the scale of the park will continue to expand along with our growth in the future," the executive stated.

Yan Jie contributed to this story.