At present, the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, and the world economy has fallen into recession. However, severe challenges such as the repeated global epidemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have not deterred Chinese companies investing abroad. Data show that from January to June 2022, China's foreign non-financial direct investment was 351.67 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.8%, of which China's non-financial direct investment in countries along the Belt and Road was 10.03 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 4.7%. It is not easy to achieve such results. As an important platform for China to promote the joint construction of the Belt and Road and promote international production capacity cooperation, overseas parks, especially national-level overseas economic and trade cooperation zones, have made important contributions to this.

Steady progress in structural optimization

Undoubtedly, due to the effective implementation of RCEP, the RCEP area will become a hot spot for Chinese enterprises to invest, and the overseas parks in this area will also usher in new opportunities for development. From a macro perspective, the biggest feature of RCEP is that it unifies regional economic and trade rules, cracks the spaghetti bowl effect, effectively solves the pain points that restrict the regional economic integration of RCEP, creates a transparent and open business environment, and promotes trade in the Asia-Pacific region. Investment facilitation. This not only reduces the operating cost of the enterprise, but also creates a new space for the layout of the industrial chain and supply chain for the enterprise. In this context, overseas parks in the RCEP region should be prepared to promote their own transformation and upgrading while welcoming Chinese enterprises to settle down.

First, overseas parks need to further expand their service scope. Since the development of overseas parks, most of the top parks have completed infrastructure construction and entered the stage of building an overall ecological service system, providing market consulting, talent management, market expansion and other services for settled enterprises, which have been recognized by settled enterprises. However, it should be pointed out that although the current RCEP has been implemented, there are still enterprises that are unfamiliar with the terms and unskilled in their application, which seriously restricts their overseas development. This requires the park to further provide professional services on RCEP for the majority of settled enterprises on the basis of its own understanding of the RCEP rules, such as helping enterprises apply for certificates of origin, providing consulting services on RCEP terms, etc., to help enterprises better enter the local market or surrounding areas. market.

Secondly, overseas parks can follow the adjustment of the industrial chain and supply chain of enterprises, clarify their own positioning, and cooperate with other parks to achieve differentiated development. The 15 contracting states of RCEP have different levels of development, and their comparative advantages are short in size and long in size, showing different characteristics. Looking further, within each country, the sub-sectors with regional advantages are also different. Therefore, overseas parks can choose local advantageous industries as the leading industries. While introducing leading enterprises to settle in, they can integrate industry resources, extend the chain and strengthen the chain, and further expand the advantages of the local industry. While contributing to local development, through detailed The sub-track gets rid of the dilemma of the homogenization of the park.

Third, overseas parks need to make good use of funds and innovative resources to empower their own development. Compared with other free trade agreements in the world, RCEP not only covers traditional issues such as trade in goods, dispute settlement, trade in services, and investment, but also new issues such as intellectual property rights, digital trade, finance, and telecommunications, which are higher than the WTO open standards. Therefore, under the framework of RCEP, it has unique operating conditions to promote the joint construction of the park by all parties. For example, the park not only utilizes the labor resources and raw materials of most ASEAN countries, but also provides conditions for making good use of the advantages of Singapore, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and other countries in capital and knowledge-intensive industries, so as to better serve the settled enterprises and enterprises. Provides its own financial and other professional services.

Finally, overseas parks need to strengthen exchanges and interactions with other parks in the region to explore experience for RCEP upgrades. Some overseas parks are themselves special economic zones of the host country, or are located in special economic zones, which will greatly promote the flow of commodities, capital, talents, technology, data, management and other elements within the RCEP zone, thereby strengthening economic and trade investment for the region cooperation, and even provide strength for global economic development. For example, at the moment when the wave of digital economy is sweeping, each park, as a special economic region, is constantly exploring the rules of digital trade development, breaking the barriers to the flow of elements, especially data elements, and further improving the level of integration in the RCEP region and promoting RCEP has been upgraded to a high-level free trade agreement in line with the characteristics of the digital trade era.

Looking into the future, the potential of Chinese enterprises' outbound investment and cooperation will continue to be released, and the high-quality development of overseas parks will become the key to promoting the high-quality development of China's outbound investment. In this sense, overseas parks in the RCEP area can make good use of the dividends that RCEP has continuously released to create model parks with accurate service projects, distinctive industrial characteristics, sufficient special policies, diversified financing methods, and leading scientific and technological innovation level, which will serve as a model park for other overseas enterprises. The park provides replicable experience and promotes the stable and long-term development of the joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative. Editor / Xu Shengpeng