A signing ceremony for a slew of major foreign investment programs to be rolled out in Zhejiang province is held at a sideline event at the third CIIE. [Photo/zj.zjol.com.cn]

Zhejiang authorities hosted signing ceremonies for a slew of major foreign investment programs at the third China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai on Nov 5. The plans will be rolled out across Zhejiang province.

Agreements signed at the Zhejiang-Europe Digital Economy & High-Tech Industry Matchmaking Conference, a sideline event at the third CIIE, and on other occasions at the expo on the same day, involved 61 foreign investment projects. The total value of the projects is $10.9 billion.

The foreign investors hail from the United States, Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Canada, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Singapore. Among them were 16 Fortune Global 500 companies and industry leaders.

The fields of investment covered intelligent manufacturing, biomedicine, automobile manufacturing, new materials, petrochemicals, clean energy, 5G communications, the digital economy, supply chains, leisure tourism and more.

Two of the agreements were at the "strategic framework" stage. The first is a strategic partnership between Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce and global healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson to build a full-life-cycle innovation chain for ophthalmology. The second is an agreement signed by Global consultancy PwC to help Hangzhou's Qiantang New Area formulate development strategies in a range of critical sectors, including medicine, automobiles, aerospace, the digital economy and intelligent manufacturing, among others.

Last November, Zhejiang inked 26 foreign investment deals at the second CIIE. To date, 25 of them have been put into practice in the province. A star project among them was the landing of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca's East China headquarters in Hangzhou, initiated by a strategic cooperation agreement signed between AstraZeneca and the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce at the expo in 2019.