The 2022 Jiangsu-German Economic and Trade Cooperation Exchange Meeting and the Jiangsu-German Industrial Cooperation Forum were held on Sept 15 in Taicang – a county-level city administered by Suzhou in East China's Jiangsu province – with high-level talks taking place on a range of commercial and development projects and other topics.

Fang Wei, vice-governor of Jiangsu and Wu Qingwen, deputy Party chief and mayor of Suzhou delivered speeches.

Fang said Germany is an important economic and trade partner of Jiangsu and in recent years the province has continued to expand their commerce and trade. Meanwhile, more and more local enterprises in Jiangsu have gone to Germany to pursue business opportunities.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany. Plans are for Jiangsu to deepen its all-round exchanges with Germany. It aims to boost commerce and trade in key areas such as intelligent manufacturing, biomedicines, artificial intelligence and the digital economy, as well as share opportunities to create a better future.

"We invite more German enterprises to deeply participate in the construction of Jiangsu, bring more high-quality projects and high-end resources here and jointly build a mutually beneficial industrial supply chain," Fang added.

Wu said Suzhou is a frontier for China's opening up and a hot spot of its cooperation with Germany. Taicang city, in particular, has become one of the areas with the most intensive investment and best development by German enterprises in China.

"Suzhou is currently accelerating the construction of industrial innovation clusters and looks forward to deepening practical exchanges and strengthening industrial cooperation with all sectors of Germany," Wu said.

"We will continue to optimize the business environment and comprehensively support all enterprises to develop and grow in Suzhou."

To date, Taicang has attracted 450 German enterprises to base operations there and more than 50 "hidden champion" companies – with a total investment of more than $5 billion and an annual industrial output value of more than 60 billion yuan ($8.51 billion).

During the event, the Hamburg House in Taicang was inaugurated. A number of German-funded industrial projects were also signed – worth 3 billion yuan – and a number of German service projects were launched in the city.