Chengdu Investment Environment

1. Transportation

(1). Road

Chengdu is one of the 45 main highway hubs in China. There are 9 national trunk lines and highways crossing through or starting from Chengdu. The city has one of China's densest highway networks, with 10 expressways so far, of which, two are leading to the sea: Chengdu-Beihai and Chengdu-Chongqing-Shanghai.

(2). Railway Transportation

Chengdu is an important railway hub in southwestern China, where four trunk lines, Chengdu-Chongqing, Baoji-Chengdu, Chengdu-Kunming and Daxian-Chengdu, cross. At present, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjing, Nanjing, Qingdao and Lianyuangang are the ports of entry and exit for railway transportation of Chengdu's imported and exported goods. Chengdu has opened 9 cargo railway routes towards Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjing, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Xuzhou, Lianyungang and Lanzhou, which are recognized by quickness, fixed departure and arrival, and low freight.

Chengdu railway stations currently can handle 100 000 containers per year. The Chengdu Railway Container Center is under construction, and its first part expected to be finished and put into use in the first quarter of 2008, which shall then have an annual handling capacity of more than 1 million containers and 12 million tons of cargo.

(3) Airlines

So far, the major domestic and international airlines which provide passenger and cargo services at Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport include China International Airlines Southwestern Company and Sichuan Airlines, Eastern Airlines, Southern Airlines, Hong Kong Dragon Airlines, Thai Airlines, Korea Asian Airlines, Macau Airlines and Singapore Silk Airlines. The main airplane types are Boeing 757, 737 and Airbus 340, 321, 320 of big and medium size. The annual passenger occupancy being 62% and the load ratio 58% averagely, the air transport capacity is relatively abundant, able to provide mixed traffic and chartered cargo flights for customers.

2. Infrastructure

Chengdu has a relatively perfect infrastructure. Alteration of old town zone and construction of new district have ameliorated the appearance of the city. Central urban area of Chengdu has reached 283.86 km2. Public facilities such as water, electricity power and gas supplies, etc. have constantly improved and the diffusion rate of tap water has reached 100 per cent in urban area. In the whole city, more than ten backbone roads have been constructed one after the other, such as Shudu Road, the First Ring Road, the Second Ring Road, the Third Ring Road, City-circling Expressway, Tianfu Road, etc. Through implementing “straightway project”, central urban roads of more than 300 km have been repaired; new constructed road area is about 400,000 m2; bridge area is 42,000 m2; some projects, such as Laonanmen Flyover, New Yiguanmiao Trestle, and Hongxing Road Underground Tunnel, etc., have been constructed. Transportation situation in urban area has constantly been improved and a city road transportation network combining circularity with rediatiform has initially formed.

3. General Situation of Human Resources

Chengdu is China's important educational and scientific research centre, having trained large quantities of high-level scientific talents every year. In addition, Chengdu is an important talent's distributing centre in the western China too. A large number of overseas students and graduates from many other cities come to work in Chengdu every year. Chengdu keeps high talent's stability and has remarkable long time labor cost advantages compared with the coastal cities.

Compared with other domestic main cities, Chengdu has a relative advantage in talent's quantity. The number of various kinds of professional technical personnel is up to 580,000, ranking the fourth among national large and medium cities and the first in the western regions. Among them, those talents with master's or higher degree account for 4%; bachelor’s degree account for 30% and 40% are with the educational background of junior college.

4. Financial Institutes

Chengdu has established its status as the regional financial center with most complete types and numbers of financial institutions. The exchange volume of the financial institutions in Chengdu ranks the first among the cities in western China, and the stock turnover ranks the third in China which is only after Shanghai and Shenzhen. So far, 13 foreign-funded financial institutions including Standard Chartered Bank, National Bank of Paris, OCBC Group, United Overseas Bank, Bank of East Asia and HSBC have established their own representative offices and branches in Chengdu. The People’s Bank of China, China Banking Regulatory Commission, China Securities Regulatory Commission and China Insurance Regulatory Commission have established their own major regional branches and agencies in Chengdu supervising the business exchanges of banks, securities and insurance in southwestern China.