Voice from the Two Sessions | Member Zhang Jinquan: It is suggested to give full play to the advantages of intermediaries and establish an ecological collaborative mechanism for investment attraction
In the current economic situation, how should local governments deal with new challenges in attracting investment? During the Shanghai Two Sessions in 2025, Zhang Jinquan, a member of the Shanghai Political Consultative Conference, proposed to fully leverage the strengths of consulting firms, investment banks, law firms, and other intermediary agencies to establish a collaborative mechanism for attracting investment. He suggested utilizing their client networks to precisely match investors with governments, employing their professional expertise to provide full-process service guarantees for project implementation, and utilizing their cross-border capabilities to carry out “reverse investment attraction.” Moreover, the establishment of a think tank center for foreign-related intermediary agencies, along with the improvement of the market and legal environment, can help enhance the quality and efficiency of investment attraction.
Zhang Jinquan is a member of the Shanghai Political Consultative Conference, as provided by the interviewee.
In his proposal on establishing an ecosystem collaborative mechanism for intermediary agencies to attract investment, Zhang stated that in recent years, against the backdrop of global economic integration and the transformation and upgrading of the domestic economic structure, the investment attraction efforts of local governments have faced unprecedented opportunities and challenges. The traditional model has been unable to meet the development needs of the new era. Therefore, how to innovate under the new circumstances, implement precise policies, and effectively improve the quality and efficiency of investment attraction has become one of the important measures for Shanghai to benchmark international and domestic advanced experiences and take the lead in creating a market-oriented, legalized, and internationalized first-class business environment.
Regarding professional intermediary agencies such as consulting firms, investment banks, law firms, and accounting firms, Zhang Jinquan believes that there is room for improvement in how to establish a business ecosystem under the traditional professional service model and become an effective channel for breaking the local government’s investment attraction mechanism. Head investment banks, law firms, and consulting companies often have several advantages: first, they have highly professional service capabilities in finance, accounting, legal fields; second, they have stable and extensive customer resources and strong customer stickiness; third, they have international branch network resources and the ability to integrate local business resources.
Regarding how to integrate decentralized intermediary agencies serving various fields into a comprehensive service联合体with high integration, high-frequency communication, and efficient service, while precisely matching government business needs, Zhang Jinquan believes there is a lot of space for action. He provided several suggestions:
Firstly, the Shanghai Intermediary Business Service Center can be established to leverage the customer network resources of intermediary agencies. By establishing a collaborative mechanism for attracting investment, big data analysis of customers and investment orientation analysis can be carried out to fully integrate and collaborate resources. This can match suitable investors based on the development goals and policy needs of various governments, thereby improving the efficiency of government recruitment and becoming an important and effective channel for government investment attraction.
Secondly, it is necessary to fully leverage the professional advantages of intermediary agencies and establish a comprehensive service mechanism for the entire process of attracting investment. The key to attracting investment lies not only in “attraction” but also in “implementation.” By fully utilizing the professional expertise of intermediary agencies, projects can receive professional service guarantees throughout the entire process from introduction, negotiation, signing, landing to commissioning. This will improve the efficiency of project implementation and help further attract investors in the same industry and upstream and downstream industries to form a industrial chain synergy and achieve the effect of “business attracting business.”
Thirdly, it is important to fully leverage the cross-border service capabilities of intermediary agencies and establish a “reverse investment attraction” model. It is expected that more than 1,000 Chinese companies will participate in overseas investment and acquisition projects with total investment exceeding $100 billion by 2025. By leveraging their ability to integrate overseas business resources and cross-border transaction services after enterprises go abroad, intermediary agencies can not only help local enterprises “go out” for overseas investment but also bring back overseas technology, talent, real estate, and funds to form a new model of “reverse investment attraction.”
Additionally, the Intermediary Business Service Center can simultaneously set up a think tank center to establish a co-construction model of government-enterprise industry-university-research collaboration. Focusing on researching international trends and legal rules, it cultivates high-quality foreign-related intermediary service talents to provide scientific evidence for the formulation of investment attraction policies. At the same time, it strengthens international cooperation, introduces internationally advanced service and management experience, improves the quality and efficiency of China’s foreign-related intermediary services, and better serves the policy orientation of both “going out” and “bringing in.”
