Following Shanghai, Shandong Province's Qingdao City has become China's second multinational procurement center. It plans to establish North China's biggest multinational purchasing center and become a focus of multinational purchasing agents at home and abroad in about 3 years.

It was learnt that in the past years, purchasing activities by some international purchasing agents were mainly focused on the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. As the production costs in South China keep growing, purchasing activities begin to move to the North. International purchasing agents are fascinated by the procurement sources in Northern areas, especially Shandong which is located in the Rim-Hunaghai & Bohai Economic Circle.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Shandong Province's economic aggregate ranked No.3 in China. In the year 2005, its gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.8 trillion RMB (US$225 billion), ranked No.2 in China. The province has successively realized annual double-digit economic growth for 15 years. Moreover, Shandong and its surrounding areas have shown outstanding superiority in manufacturing which is able to meet the demand of "made in China" products by multinational purchasing agents to a large extent.

As Shandong's leading city and one of its manufacturing bases, Qingdao surely has many advantages by virtue of its geographical location. Qingdao, as one of the famous port cities in global trade, has long served both sides of the international trade and has nurtured thousands of mature trading companies, attracting many well-known international organizations to set up purchasing offices there. Along with the continual entrance by international retail giants, Qingdao is becoming one of the mature cities to attract plenty of multinational commercial assets and the first choice for multinational agents to make procurement in North China.

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