Kong Lei, deputy director of the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area (BDA) Administrative Committee, recently introduced the "Two Zones" construction in the BDA and answered related questions.

Under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, indications are that the economy of the BDA has been operating steadily and growing rapidly. 

In the first quarter of this year, the BDA's regional GDP reached 53.01 billion yuan ($8.2 billion), a growth rate of 37.5 percent, ranking second in Beijing, and the industrial added value was 31.23 billion yuan, a growth rate of 45.5 percent. 

From January to May, the total industrial output value reached 252.18 billion yuan, a growth rate of 41.9 percent; the growth rate of fixed asset investment amounted to 31.7 percent. 

In terms of utilization of foreign capital, from January to May, 32 foreign-funded enterprises were newly added, an increase of 88 percent year-on-year, while the actual use of foreign capital was $440 million, 2.2 times that of the same period last year. 

Among the new foreign-funded companies 20 are located in the free trade zone, accounting for 63 percent of new arrivals, and their actual use of foreign capital is $135 million, accounting for 30.68 percent of the total for the zone.

Up to now, the BDA has signed more than 180 projects, with a total investment of over 420 billion yuan. 

The projects include not only high-end manufacturing projects such as new generation information technology, new energy smart cars, biotechnology and health, robotics and smart manufacturing, but also modern service industry projects such as finance and commerce that empower high-end manufacturing. 

They include the North China headquarters project of AstraZeneca, a world-renowned biopharmaceutical company, the Beijing insulin expansion project of Sanofi, the world's leading medical and health company, the SMIC Capital Project with a monomer investment of $7.6 billion in the field of integrated circuits, and world-renowned pneumatic component manufacturer SMC's first overseas regional headquarters project, as well as the Schneider Electric Digital Industry Demonstration Park.

The BDA has issued the first group of 30 industrial promotion policies and formed a list of 213 innovation tasks. The current implementation rate exceeds 70 percent, according to Kong.