Recently, foreign-funded retail enterprises have accelerated their business layout in China: Shenzhen Longhua Store, a market opener, opened; Rosen Convenience Store established its Shandong headquarters and announced that it would cooperate with local retail enterprises; IKEA expanded its investment in China to meet diversified consumer demand... Intensive actions demonstrated the confidence of foreign businessmen and supermarkets in the sustainable and sound development of China's economy.

Keep up with consumer demand and improve commodity services

At Decathlon's Beijing Yuquan Road store, cycling enthusiast Xu Tonghui is shopping for bicycles: "I'm going to change an aluminum alloy road bike this spring. There are many kinds of goods in the store, as well as a repair and maintenance area. Professionals will help to transfer bikes, so I'm relieved!" Xu Tonghui is a real sportsman who skis in winter and rides bikes in summer. In recent years, He found more and more cyclists around him: "Everyone's professionalism is getting higher and higher, and you can often see someone organizing activities in the 'riding group' on weekends or in the evening."

Decathlon has invested in the Chinese market for more than 20 years. Decathlon has been deeply involved in the sports field, and has continuously increased its investment in China. At present, its product lines are constantly enriched, which can meet the needs of all levels from beginners to professional sports enthusiasts. In addition, Decathlon has realized the whole industrial chain model in China by building its own factory, intelligent manufacturing and procurement center, logistics park, brand center, etc. Based on this foundation, enterprises continue to launch their own brand products to meet the growing needs of consumers.

For many foreign-funded retail enterprises, the Chinese market has already become a training ground and touchstone to enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises. From the demand side, with the steady increase of China's residents' income level, consumer demand presents personalized, high-end and other characteristics, and consumers put forward higher requirements for market supply; From the supply side, after years of development, China's retail industry has a complete industrial chain supply chain and full competition in the industry. Domestic and foreign businessmen and super enterprises must keep pace with the demand for consumption upgrading, and constantly provide better goods and services to become more competitive in the Chinese market.

"The growing demand of Chinese consumers for sports products and the increasingly high quality requirements have forced us to speed up the introduction of new products," said Sai Wanzhou, the relevant person in charge of Decathlon China.

In December last year, IKEA's Beijing Tianjin Customer Distribution Center in Baodi District, Tianjin was officially opened. As the largest distribution center for all categories of customers in the Chinese market, the Beijing Tianjin customer distribution center has a total investment of 492 million yuan, demonstrating IKEA's firm confidence in the long-term development of the Chinese market. "With the constant change of customers' purchasing behavior and the expectation of higher quality service, we are also constantly improving our ability to better meet customers' needs. The opening of the Beijing Tianjin Customer Distribution Center is a good opportunity for us to better serve the northern market, which is dominated by the Beijing Tianjin region." Ma Silin, the relevant head of IKEA China, said.

Following the trend of consumption upgrading in the Chinese market, IKEA is committed to building a consumer centered omni channel retail ecosystem. The Beijing Tianjin Customer Distribution Center project, as IKEA's omni channel order distribution hub in northern China, can deliver more than 9500 IKEA products, achieve full category distribution, and bring consumers a better shopping experience through one-time integrated omni channel goods delivery and more efficient logistics distribution.

Super large market brings new growth space

General merchandise, coffee and light food, collection and express delivery...... In Nantong, Jiangsu Province, many citizens found more and more chain convenience stores on the street. "Daily needs can be basically solved here, it is close and convenient to open 24 hours a day." Xue Wen, a citizen of Nantong, is satisfied with the changes around him.

"The rising demand of citizens for instant consumption, convenience consumption and quality consumption is an important reason for the rapid development of convenience stores." Analysis by the relevant person in charge of Nantong Municipal Bureau of Commerce. The rapid rise in consumer demand has brought a broad market to domestic and foreign enterprises. Statistics show that the number of convenience stores in Nantong has increased rapidly in more than three years, including dozens of domestic and foreign brands.

According to the statistics of China Chain Store Association, in 2023, the sales performance of convenience store enterprises in China will be generally good, and the number of stores will continue to increase. In 2023, the urbanization rate of China's permanent population will be 66.2%. There is still much room for new urbanization to develop and improve. With the steady progress of new urbanization, there will be more demand for consumption and investment, and more opportunities for Chinese and foreign enterprises.

At more than 12 o'clock on Saturday, there was a long queue in the baking area of Shenzhen Longhua Store, the market opener, and customers were waiting for the freshly baked beef rolls to come out of the oven. "At the weekend, a family drove over to shop. They were all in large packs, which was suitable for families. We would eat here after we bought them." Li Xiang, who lives in Futian District, said while showing the reporters the shopping cart, which was loaded with blueberries, imported milk, frozen mutton kebabs, nuts, etc., and bought the "best selling" strawberry bear dolls for the children.

At the beginning of January, the Shenzhen store opened, attracting a large number of consumers to shop. The sales of the day refreshed the sales data of the opening customers' stores in China on the day of opening.

According to the data of China Chain Store Association, there will be about 400 new shopping center projects in China in 2023; According to statistics, foreign businessmen who have invested in China in recent years have achieved a return on direct investment of about 9% in recent years, which is at a high international level; There are more than 1 billion smart phone users and netizens in China, and any new technology can be quickly promoted in China... Groups of data are a true reflection of the strong resilience and vitality of China's economy, and also become a powerful force to attract foreign investors to expand investment in China. In January 2024, 4588 foreign-invested enterprises were newly established nationwide, with a year-on-year increase of 74.4%.

Recently, the American Chamber of Commerce in China released its annual China Business Environment Survey Report, which said that the financial performance of American enterprises in China in 2023, their expectations of China's development prospects, and their investment intentions in China have improved, and most of the interviewed enterprises will still maintain their layout in China.

Zhu Bing, Director of the Department of Foreign Investment Management of the Ministry of Commerce, said that China has a huge market with a population of more than 1.4 billion and a middle-income group of more than 400 million people. The new journey towards modernization will create huge market opportunities.

Expand high-level openness and share development opportunities

In addition to being optimistic about China's economic recovery potential and development prospects, in recent years China has continued to expand its opening up and promoted trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, which has also greatly encouraged multinational enterprises to invest in China.

On February 22, Rosen Convenience Store, the world's second largest chain retailer, established its Shandong headquarters in Jinan, and announced that the first batch of stores would cooperate with local new retail leaders in Jinan, which should be fast and slow, to give full play to their respective advantages and jointly build and promote rapid development.

"Shandong proposes to maintain a high level of openness and high-quality investment promotion, which makes us confident." Huadong, deputy general manager of Rosen Investment Co., Ltd., said, "This choice to settle in Jinan is based on Jinan's regional advantages and huge development potential. For many years, we have been very optimistic about the development prospects of the Chinese market, and Rosen is striving to achieve the goal of 10000 stores by 2025. "

"China continues to promote the reform of the foreign investment system, increase investment promotion, protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment, and constantly improve the level of foreign investment utilization." Cui Fan, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics, said that the key to accelerating the construction of a new development pattern and improving the level of foreign investment utilization is to improve the attractiveness of China's super large market for foreign investment and optimize the foreign investment environment.

In recent years, China's negative list of foreign investment access has been continuously reduced. The first negative list of foreign investment access in 2013 has 190 items, which is now shortened to 31 items in the national version and 27 items in the free trade zone version. This year, we will promote the elimination of restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector, and ease access to telecommunications, medical and other service industries. At the same time, policies and measures that violate the fair competition between domestic and foreign capital should be normalized. One policy measure after another has formed a pattern of opening up to the outside world in a wider range, wider fields and at a deeper level, and constantly provides new opportunities for the world with China's new development.

On February 28, the Ministry of Commerce held a round table meeting on foreign-funded enterprises to introduce the implementation of the Opinions of the State Council on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Increasing the Attraction of Foreign Investment. The Ministry of Commerce said that although the document was only issued for more than half a year, most of the measures have been implemented or made positive progress with the full cooperation of relevant departments. In the next step, the Ministry of Commerce will work with relevant departments and local governments to continue to promote the implementation of various measures to achieve results, listen to the opinions and suggestions of foreign-funded enterprises, carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the implementation, constantly improve the work, and enhance the sense of policy acquisition of foreign-funded enterprises.

China's big market and new opportunities in the world, under the background of unswervingly promoting high-level opening up, more and more foreign-funded enterprises are using real gold and silver to cast "vote of confidence" on China's economy, catch the fast train of China's development, and share the development dividends. (Luo Shanshan Zhongzhenyu)