A dialogue between Chengdu, Xi'an on opening inland cities (4)

Here are some statistics. Chengdu is now seat to consulates of nine countries and 212 world top 500 enterprises. Its International Shuangliu Airport reports 29 million passenger entries/exits yearly, is called the "fourth city in China aviation" and has opened 17 international direct routes. During the first half of this year, Chengdu approved 139 projects of foreign investment (up 61.6% year on year) and registered an actual use of US$2.04 billion in foreign capital (up 40.9% year on year), ranking first among western Chinese cities.

X: Compared with Chengdu, Xi'an lags a little behind in terms of import/export total amount and actual use of foreign capital. But it has made progress over the years in all indexes of opening up. Presently, Xi'an houses 130 branches by 80 enterprises of the world top 500, nearly 3,000 foreign invested enterprises and its import/export in 2011 hit US$12.5 billion. Between 2006 and 2011, Xi'an reported 671 projects of direct foreign investment with a total amount of US$13.153 billion; its actual use of foreign capital increased from US$825 million to US$2,005 million, rising 1.43 times and the total amount reaching US$7.878 billion.

C: You are not "tucked away" as long as your mind is not. The key lies in the industries you choose. To break the bottleneck of logistics costs, an inland city must pick industries small in size, big in value and insensitive of transport costs. In traditional logistics, Chengdu is far away from the US, but not so far away from Europe, and the physical distance ceases to be if delivery is made on the Net.

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