Jiang said while foreign companies that left are not repatriating moved factories and assets, since March some have apparently decided to keep sourcing goods from China, or have returned to previous Chinese suppliers after moving orders out.
She added the volatility of the global economy and the difficulties of operation for companies who moved to Southeast Asia have made companies more aware of the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturers.
“If these companies are really resistant to working with China, they would not make such decisions,” said Jiang, who is now president of the China Society of Industrial Economics, an academic organisation under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). “We must see China has grown to compete with other middle to high-end manufacturing powers in the world, and everything we are experiencing now is a normal state of market…
