Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning Province in northeast China, is setting out to attract more German companies.

China’s northeast was once the pillar of the country's economy back in the heydays of the planned economy. The mega SOE (state-owned enterprise) driven economy in the region took a sharp downturn as China opened up and manufacturing shifted to southern China.

Shenyang, also the largest city in the region, aims to attract more German companies with its sound infrastructure and labor pool left from its bygone days.

The city's China-Germany High-end Equipment Manufacturing Park has already attracted 127 German funded, joint venture, or foreign funded companies. Eighty percent of the industrial operations revolve around the automobile industry.

BMW Brilliance Automobile, the park's flagship company, is investing heavily in the area. BMW already has assembly plants with a production capability of 400,000 cars per year operational in the industrial park, as well as its only power train plant outside Europe, and its largest R&D center outside Germany.

BMW’s new plant is also under construction in the park, and is set to begin operation in 2022, increasing its capacity by another 400,000 cars per year.

Shenyang is also sparing nothing to safeguard one of its biggest investors by providing administrative, staff, as well as logistics support. "Forty containers of auto parts from Europe enter BMW’s plant by train directly, by the China-Europe railway express," said Guo Zhongxiao, director of the administrative committee of the industry park.

The park aims to be more attractive to overseas companies by better integrating human resources, projects, funding, and industry by cooperating with academia and other companies, as well as initiating more exchange programs with sectors in Germany.

The park also promised to cut red tape to ease the process for overseas companies to enter the city.