China still priority for companies from US

China remains a priority market for companies of the United States, with many of them believing it is vital to stay competitive in this market in order to win globally, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said in a white paper on Tuesday.

The document, the 24th edition of the American Business in China White Paper, said that AmCham China's member companies stand committed to the Chinese market. About 83 percent of them report they are not considering relocating manufacturing or sourcing outside of China.

With China being a top market priority for nearly two-thirds of the chamber's member companies, Colm Rafferty, the chamber's chairman, said its members believe that a decoupling of the US and China economies is in neither country's economic interest.

As the world economy faces multiple uncertainties, China and the US should strengthen cooperation to meet each other halfway. Improvement in Sino-US economic and trade relations will not only benefit the two nations, but also the world, said Liu Ying, a researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of the Renmin University of China in Beijing.

The US should remove additional tariffs on China and promote economic and trade cooperation between Chinese and US companies, instead of creating obstacles against that purpose, she said, adding that in these times of globalization and digital economy, no country can develop by itself.

Regarding its priority for 2022, AmCham China said it will encourage action-based engagement between the US and China to create substantive and mutually beneficial initiatives and solutions on an issue-by-issue basis, and it will support both sides to enrich cooperation and exchanges in areas of global and bilateral importance.

Owing to such factors as the weakening global goods demand and resurgence in COVID-19 cases in China, the white paper revealed that 58 percent of AmCham members have already lowered revenue projections for 2022 in China and 61 percent have experienced supply chain disruptions due to transportation and shipping issues.

Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said China's strict COVID-19 prevention and control measures provide clear pathways for enterprises to abide with related policies, and the stability of the dynamic-zero approach also ensures policy predictability, which is important for enterprises to grow.

Besides, China is improving its epidemic prevention and control measures through practices working toward dynamic zero-COVID, and better coordination between long-term economic growth and COVID-19 prevention and control is expected, he said.

As the coronavirus mutates constantly, China's dynamic zero-COVID strategy is helpful to cut the possibility of new deadlier and more transmissible variants, he added.

China's actual use of foreign capital surged by 20.5 percent year-on-year to 478.61 billion yuan ($70.78 billion) in the first four months of 2022, while investment from the US rose 53.2 percent on a yearly basis, according to Ministry of Commerce data.

US automaker Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory shipped 4,767 electric cars to Slovenia earlier this month, and Starbucks, the Seattle-headquartered coffee chain, said it is still on track to achieve its goal of operating 6,000 stores in China by the end of the year.