The 8th Guangzhou Annual Investment Conference and the 1st Global Unicorn CEO Forum kicked off its first parallel session in Israel’s Tel Aviv on February 23. Representatives of top-tier bio-medicine and technology companies, experts and officials were invited to the session to share views on how to boost high-tech cooperation between Guangzhou and Israel.
As a major platform to showcase Guangzhou’s achievements in opening up and international cooperation, the annual investment conference has been hosted for 7 consecutive years.
The 2021 Guangzhou Annual Investment Conference (Photo: Nanfang Daily)
According to local government, the conference is going to run over March 29 and 30 in Guangzhou this year with about 2,000 business leaders, entrepreneurs and experts from 38 countries and regions expected to join it in both online and offline forums. For the first time, the conference will set up a forum for global unicorn CEOs.
As part of the conference, 9 parallel sessions will be held across the world before mid-March, namely Silicon Valley, Tokyo, Macao, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Sminsk, Tashkent, Berlin and Heidelberg.
During the Israel session, entrepreneurs and scholars expressed that Guangzhou owns a complete industrial chain and innovative system with huge market opportunities. Guangzhou and Israel can deepen cooperation of high-tech enterprises by utilizing both Guangzhou’s unique resources and Israel’s cutting-edge innovative technologies.
Dr. Yehoshua Jacob Gleitman, former minister of Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor of Israel, took a review in the session of how Guangzhou and Israel have built up comprehensive and in-depth cooperation in terms of talents, technology, capital and service with the support of Guangzhou government. With the joint efforts of Guangzhou and Israel, an incubator as well as an investment fund for biology industry have been set up and are working smoothly in the Guangzhou International Bio Island.
Guangzhou International Bio Island clusters a great number of biology enterprises. (Photo: Nanfang Daily)
Dr. Yehoshua Jacob Gleitman also expressed his expectation for the Global Unicorn CEO Forum. He believes that Israeli enterprises who have settled in Guangzhou all show great possibility of growing to a unicorn enterprise.
According to the head of Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau, the total import and export value of Guangzhou and Israel in 2021 stood at 752 million USD, an increase of 55.08% over last year. 2021 also witnessed the establishment of 13 new Israeli investment enterprises in Guangzhou. As of January 2022, Israeli has invested in 74 enterprises in Guangzhou. Next, Guangzhou will continue to build a convenient environment for start-up, investment and business.
