The lifeline of Ningbo Development lies in the investment attraction, which is obviously the top priority among all our responsibilities and cares. As our industrial development strategy focus evenly on the development of modern port industries and high-tech industries, we have been trying to captivate investments by taking active measures such as making door-to-door presentation, sending invitations, undertaking collective investment attraction efforts for one type of trade or industry, strengthening the business attraction network and improving investment attraction team etc. As a result, our efforts paid off for we have achieved great success in investment captivation. Ningbo Development Zone has now become the strategic area and important base to captivate foreign investments in Ningbo and Zhejiang province. The zone has also been densely populated by multi-national companies, large-scale projects, high-tech enterprises and Taiwanese enterprises.

By the end of 2001, over 4700 enterprises have settled in Ningbo Development Zone. We have approved investments from 39 countries and regions and the accumulated investments reach 5.86 billion USD, among which 4.59 billion USD are the stated figures in the contracts and 1.68 billion USD are actually acquired investments. We have also observed the following features of foreign investment activities here:

1) There are many large-scale foreign investment projects. We have 112 large-scale foreign investment projects that are worth 10 million USD and 64 comparatively large-scale foreign investment projects that are worth between 5 million and 10 million USD.

2) Taking advantage of the near-by harbor, conglomeration of modern industries has come into being and has brought deep impact on the industrial restructuring in Ningbo and Zhejiang.

3) High-tech industries are guiding the industrial development in an ever more discernible way. Since 2000, we have witnessed active investments happen in the area of high-tech industries.

4) Worldwide leading multi-national enterprises have showed special favor for our Development Zone. 16 out of TOP 500 worldwide multi-national companies set up their ventures here, which includes Esso, Dow Chemical (from US), Mitsui, Mitsubishi Itochu, Marubeni, Asashi Chemical, Kanematsu, Sumitomo, Iwai (from Japan), Hoechst, Mannesman (from Germany) and Samsung (Korea) etc.

5) Our Development Zone has been a new investment focus for Taiwanese investors after Dongguan and Southern Jiangsu.

6) Enterprises here have showed strong desires to make additional investment because of their successful performance. Therefore, their healthy growth has been attracting more and more foreign investments.