Xinjiang companies sign multimillion-dollar-deals

Several companies based in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region signed multimillion-dollar-contracts at the China International Import Expo (CIIE), and business representatives see the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) injecting new impetus into local economic growth, which contributes to local social stability.

The Xinjiang-based clean energy company TBEA signed deals worth nearly 1 billion yuan ($144.3 million) with Swiss engineering group ABB, German discrete semiconductor and passive element producer Vishay, German power transformer producer MR and Japan’s Mitsubishi Group at the expo.

Being positioned as a key area of China’s opening-up to the west region, as well as a “core area” on routes of the BRI, Xinjiang is benefiting from increasing Sinoforeign cooperation between enterprises that the BRI has attracted, local business representatives said.

Zhang Xin, president of TBEA, told the Global Times the company insists on allocating resources globally.

It selects and purchases raw materials and components from all over the world, and the CIIE provides a platform to buy products and technologies with higher quality and lower costs, Zhang said.

One component of the power transformer that TBEA produces for the BRI-related energy infrastructure projects, named tapchanger, is offered by the global transformer control solution provider German’s MR.

“We’ve collaborated with Chinese enterprises including TBEA for many years, and we are looking forward to further participating in the BRI projects with our Chinese partners,” MR Managing Director Michael Rohde told the Global Times on Thursday.

Thanks to the BRI, Xinjiang has a very promising future, Zhang told the Global Times.

“Companies in Xinjiang not only bring in more investments and advanced technologies but also further go global with our foreign partners,” he said.

“All these factors have contributed to the stable economy and social stability of today’s Xinjiang,” he added.

Xinjiang’s GDP exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($144.2 billion) for the first time in 2017, when it grew 7.6 percent year-on-year, the Xinhua News Agency reported in February.

China’s overall GDP grew 6.9 percent year-on-year in 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.