China's Improved Business Climate Draws Overseas Companies

China's 2025 R&D spending hit 3.92 trillion yuan, 2.8% of GDP — above the OECD average for the first time. 50 National Excellent Engineer Colleges are co-training 36,000 engineers with enterprises, and 81% of the first cohort joined key employers. Engineering recruitment in China now starts on campus.

China's foreign trade grew 17.6% to 34.78 trillion yuan in the first eight months of 2026, led by chips, batteries and robots. The bottleneck is people: technical international sales, trade compliance and overseas regional managers for new export markets.

China's medical device exports grew 12.4% to $27.1 billion in H1 2026, with surgical robots up 368%. The bottleneck is people: regulatory affairs leads, international sales managers and service engineers for EU MDR and FDA markets.

The binding constraint is no longer entry-level operators but the middle layer: process engineers, fab managers and supply chain leads able to work across two regulatory systems and three languages, with senior vacancies open six to nine months.