Wider opening up brings more opportunities for Beijing Enterprises

Beijing's service industry is leading the country in optimizing its business environment.

To open up its service industry, Beijing has eased market entry in areas of international communication, culture, renovation and finance.

A press release on Beijing’s wider opening up in the service industry. [Photo:China Plus]

"Beijing has canceled the shareholding limit of foreign investment in projects of aircraft maintenance. In further opening up, we will relax threshold of wholly foreign owned companies locating in Beijing. We plan to relaxing more in information service, health and social work areas," said Liu Meiying from Beijing Commerce Bureau.

Being the first foreign controlled aircraft maintenance company in Beijing, Beijing LMI is a joint company of Beijing General Aviation, a maintenance company under Beijing Automotive Group, and Air France-KLM Maintenance Engineering Company.

The Chinese company holds a 40 percent stake in the joint venture and the French company holds the remaining 60 percent.

Previously, the Chinese company would have had to have been the majority shareholder in any such JV.

Beijing LMI General Manager Wu Yutong says the cooperation between the two sides made little progress because of the former regulations, but that changed well after teh capital eased the old restrictions.

"Thanks to Beijing's further opening up in the service industry, the two sides reached agreement quickly and joint contract were signed in 2015," Wu said.

For foreign enterprises entering Beijing, Liu says the government is making administrative procedures simpler and quicker.

"We will speed up the whole process from registry, change and write off," Liu said.

Beijing has built up R&D centers of multinational enterprises like Apple, Nestle and Alibaba. International rating agencies Moody, S&P and Fitch have also set new legal entities in Beijing.

Many companies have also benefited from the opening up. ABB China is one of them.

Lars Eckerlein, Vice President of ABB China. [Photo:China Plus]

"Thanks to Beijing's opening up policies, we have experienced Beijing government excellent service awareness,” said Lars Eckerlein, Vice President of the company, “therefore, we've enjoyed very good business and investment environment in the past years. Thanks to Beijing's wider opening up polices, we enjoyed eased government approval procedures such as simplified filing procedures as well as successful relocation of our tax registration for several entities just in a few."

Meanwhile, to attract foreign talents to work in Beijing, the city also offers more relaxed policies on exit and entry. Over 2,100 foreign nationals have received permanent residence since 2015, surpassing the number in the previous ten years.

The opening up of Beijing's service industry also brings key opportunities for its high quality development. The service industry now contributes over 80% of the city's GDP, the highest ratio in the country.