The investment of multinationals is one of the concrete embodiment of China's reform and opening up. Forty years ago, foreign enterprises, including multinationals, began to invest and run business in Chinese market. The scale of their investment has grown from small to large, the level of investment has grown from low to high, and the investment areas have scattered from coastal areas to inland areas, which is an unique characteristic in the process of China’s reform and opening up.

With the tagline "Multinationals and China", the first Qingdao Multinationals Summit focused on multinationals and China’s new era, multinationals and new international economic order, multinationals and business mode innovation, multinationals and local economic development. It had more than 30 activities which includes the opening ceremony, opening forum, closed-door meeting, parallel panels and roadshows.

Federico Zoppas, general manager of IRCA S.p.A Zoppas Industries, suggested that topics of the first Qingdao Multinationals Summit is very convincing and it demonstrated the greatness of China. At the Summit, China released strong policy attractions for multinationals through discussions on intellectual property rights, free trade zones and other topics.