The Catalan Minister for Business and Labour, Roger Torrent i Ramió, announced on Thursday the creation of the China Desk to boost Chinese investment in Catalonia. The office will be located at the headquarters of ACCIÓ (the Catalan Government’s agency for business competitiveness) in Barcelona and will work in coordination with the agency’s offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

The aim of this initiative is to increase the attraction of investment projects from the production plants, headquarters or technology centres of Chinese companies, mainly in the mobility and health sectors. To this end, the China Desk will have a team of Chinese professionals located in Barcelona with the same business culture, to facilitate dialogue with local authorities and multinational managers, who will follow a specific strategy to facilitate the establishment of multinationals from this country.

Torrent made this announcement during a working session with around a hundred Catalan and Chinese companies at the Palau de Pedralbes, which was attended by the Chinese Ambassador to Spain, Yao Jing. During his speech, the Minister for Business and Labour said that “as a result of the pandemic caused by Covid-19, with the shortening of global value chains and the activation of NextGenerationEU funds, the biggest window of opportunity in recent years has opened to attract more productive investment from China, a clearly strategic country for the Catalan Government”.

According to Torrent, to this must be added the fact that “China is one of the largest investors on a global scale but one of the least established countries in Europe in the field of manufacturing”.In this respect, the Minister stressed that “the Catalan Government has been working in the field for more than 30 years to attract projects from Chinese multinationals to Catalonia, but now we are taking another step forward with the launch of the China Desk to take advantage of this historic context”. Torrent announced a new institutional mission of the Catalan Government to China this April to promote business opportunities in Catalonia, attract new foreign investment projects and strengthen trade relations between the two territories. There are currently more than 200 subsidiaries of Chinese companies established in Catalonia, with an exponential growth in recent years that has led China to become the third most important non-European country in terms of the number of subsidiaries in Catalonia, only preceded by the United States and Japan. Along with Wanhua, recent investment projects include the Chinese textile company Shanghai Jingqingrong Garment, which will open its first production plant abroad in Catalonia.

The new ACCIÓ China Plan

The China Desk is one of the initiatives that form part of the new ACCIÓ China Plan, a country strategy promoted by the Government of Catalonia in China to accelerate the internationalisation and innovation of Catalan companies in this market, in addition to attracting foreign investment. With more than 2.3 billion euros exported by Catalonia in 2022, China is currently the second non-European destination with the highest volume of sales by Catalan companies, behind only the United States.

Thus, the new ACCIÓ China Plan aims to increase the number of expansion projects of Catalan companies in this market through digital channels (eTrade) and the opening of subsidiaries in the Asian country, as well as collaborations in technology transfer in priority areas such as digitisation and mobility of the future. To this end, new strategic collaboration agreements will be established with local entities, Hong Kong will be promoted as a gateway for missions by start-ups, and business projects with a high technological component with the capacity to scale up in China will be identified, among others.