Interview: Panasonic determined to contribute to China's high-quality development -- Panasonic VP

TOKYO, March 10 (Xinhua) -- China is an important market driving the overall performance of the Panasonic Group, said Tetsuro Homma, executive vice president of Panasonic Corporation.

The company will continue to contribute to China's high-quality development in the future, said Homma, also group regional head for China and Northeast Asia, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

He said Panasonic continues to have high expectations for the Chinese market as he believes that its business development goals in China should be consistent with the country's high-quality development.

Homma recalled that Panasonic's business in China started around 1978, and the company's cooperation with China has gone through 45 years.

He said that Panasonic came to China with the promise of "making contributions to Chinese society" and experienced the process of making joint progress and synchronous development with Chinese society where the living standards and consumption capacity of Chinese people have been greatly improved after more than 40 years of reform and opening up.

Panasonic has also witnessed the country's various efforts to improve the investment environment, and the progress has been rapid and significant, Homma said, noting that a series of policies and laws such as the Foreign Investment Law have been enacted to ensure that foreign investment is fully protected.

In recent years, Panasonic's business in China has maintained a good momentum of development with 70 branch companies currently operating in China and a total of about 52,000 employees, he said.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Panasonic's business in China has seen a strong development due to the effective measures taken by the Chinese government at all levels to curb the viral transmission and minimize its impact on enterprises, Homma said.

According to Homma, as of March 2022, Panasonic's business in China achieved double-digit growth for both fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021, accounting for nearly 30 percent of the profit of the entire Panasonic Group, which was the largest outside Japan.

Maintaining double-digit growth for two consecutive fiscal years is rare elsewhere because there are few markets in the world with such promising development prospects as China, he added.

Panasonic has been hiring about 600 engineers annually in China in recent years, Homma said, and China is the only market other than Japan where the company hires so many engineers because China produces many well-educated young talents every year.

Considering the size and the future of the Panasonic Group against the backdrop of Japan's shrinking population, especially the declining young-age population, Homma said that the resources of Chinese engineers are very important, and the company has spent 20 years training more than 9,000 engineers in China.

In order to continue to expand the scale of production in China and maintain sustainable development, Panasonic will keep expanding its team of engineers in the future, he said.

Having high expectations for the Chinese market, Panasonic has formulated a very solid development plan, Homma said, adding that the company is currently expanding new business in 14 Chinese cities, including building new factories, research and development centers and marketing bases.

The company will align its business development goals in China with China's high-quality development goals, and continue to promote its business in areas such as low-carbon environmental protection, green economy, smart life and healthy living, he said.