Dongying, a city in East China's Shandong province, has been helping local enterprises expand in international markets as part of the city's attempt to achieve a higher level of opening-up.

At Dahai New Energy, a photovoltaic production enterprise in Dongying, workers stay busy on the production line processing overseas orders. Even though the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic caused many challenges for foreign trade, Dahai New Energy can still receive a large number of overseas orders. In addition to the company's excellent production quality, it also benefits from the local government's supporting policies.

The order marks the start of a new partnership between Austria and Dongying's new energy enterprises. "It is a project related to the Belt and Road Initiative and promoted by the Dongying government. We are very grateful to the government for helping our company open up to the Austrian market," said Wang Yongjin, director of the foreign trade department of Dahai New Energy Co.

Since the beginning of 2022, the Dongying municipal bureau of commerce has organized more than 200 foreign-invested companies to attend more than 50 offline and online trade exhibitions in countries including the United States, Germany, South Korea and Japan in battery and auto parts fields to seek trade orders.

During the Automechanika Dubai, which was held from Nov 22 to 24, two rubber companies from Dongying – Hongsheng and Roadboss— reached agreements worth $23 million.

According to the statistics from Dongying customs, during the first three quarters of this year, the city's foreign trade value hit 19.77 billion yuan ($2.83 billion), ranking fourth in Shandong province. It was 33.3 percent higher than the same period last year, 17.8 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of the province's foreign trade.

The recent 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasized that more efforts need to be made to promote a higher level of opening-up, and foster a new pattern of development that features positive interplay between domestic and international economic flows.

In the future, Dongying government plans to increase support and services in policy implementation, certificate processing, and exhibition negotiation for foreign trade companies to explore foreign markets, promote foreign trade growth and further deepen opening-up.