Containers are unloaded at Qingdao Port in Shandong province in March. [Photo by Yu Fangping/For China Daily]

East China's Shandong province remains a highly favored investment destination for global companies, said local officials at a recent news conference.

In the first half of this year, 1,151 new foreign-invested enterprises were established in the province, an increase of 10.3 percent year-on-year. The foreign investment actually utilized in Shandong amounted to $11.47 billion.

Over this period, governments at all levels in Shandong launched 72 overseas business promotional activities, resulting in 146 new foreign-invested projects.

From January to June, 15 projects, each worth over $100 million, were settled in Shandong, three more than that of last year's figure. The projects involved a total investment of $2.6 billion, accounting for 22.7 percent of the province's total foreign investment. During this period, 13 overseas Fortune Global 500 companies invested in 19 new projects in Shandong province.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). As Shandong province has been actively contributing to the development of this initiative, its trade with the countries and regions involved in the BRI has increased at an average annual growth of 12.3 percent. This increased the province's import and export trade value from 404.45 billion yuan ($56.64 billion) in 2013 to 1.3 trillion yuan in 2022.

In the first half of the year, Shandong invested $1.21 billion into various BRI countries, an increase of 19.4 percent year-on-year, accounting for 25 percent of the province's total investment.

Since the beginning of this year, Shandong overseas economic and trade cooperation zones, such as the China-EU Trade and Logistics Cooperation Park and the East Africa Trade and Logistics Industrial Park, have achieved outstanding results regarding overseas warehouses, cross-border e-commerce, overseas exhibition centers and other new forms of foreign trade.

During this same period, the province's overseas economic and trade cooperation zones also registered a combined export volume that amounted to more than 14 billion yuan.