BEIJING, July 11 (Xinhua) -- China has seen its overseas investment entered a new stage in recent years and has become a key country investing abroad. Though the developed economies around the world remain the hot investment destinations, investment in countries along the Belt and Road has grown steadily. Chinese enterprises have expanded their international market and brought their comparative advantages into play when going global.
According to the latest statistics released by the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), China's investment in 54 countries along the Belt and Road routes totaled 5.93 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months, up 8.2 percent year on year. The value of newly-signed contracts in the countries along the routes accounted for 42.4 percent of the total in the same period, and the completed turnover accounted for 54 percent of the total.
In August, 2017, a guideline jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), MOC, the People's Bank of China and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs strengthened the management model of "encouraging development + negative list", steer and standardize the direction and fields of overseas investment by categorizing overseas investment as "encouraged investment, restricted investment and prohibited investment".
"We encourage and support rather than restricting the investment in advancing Belt and Road construction, deepening international industrial capacity cooperation, driving the export of domestic superior industrial capacity, quality equipment and applicable technologies, improving China's R&D and manufacturing capabilities, making up the shortage of China's energy and resources, and promoting the upgrading of relevant industries in China," said Bai Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC), in an interview with the Economic Daily.
China registered a non-financial outward direct investment of 47.89 billion U.S. dollars from January to May, up 38.5 percent year on year. China signed a large number of major foreign projects in the period which boosted China's export, including 274 foreign projects with a contract amount of over 50 million U.S. dollars each, accounting for 85.5 percent of the total amount of new contracts. These foreign contracts contributed goods exports of 7.54 billion U.S. dollars, up 25.7 percent year on year.
In terms of industries, China's overseas investment mainly flowed to leasing and business services, manufacturing, mining, and wholesale & retail, accounting for 29.9 percent, 15 percent, 12.3 percent and 7.6 percent respectively. There are no new overseas investment projects for the sectors of real estate, sports and entertainment.
"The increase in the investment flowing to manufacturing, IT and other encouraged industries suggests that irrational investment has been curbed effectively, enterprises' awareness and capability of risk prevention and control in overseas investment has grown constantly and overseas investment has become increasingly rational," said Bai.
MOC has strengthened the authenticity and compliance examination of overseas investment in association with relevant departments since December 2016, leading to a plunge in overseas investment growth while effectively curbing irrational investment. Delightedly, China's overseas investment started to rebound in the fourth quarter of 2017 and has grown steadily since the beginning of this year with its overseas investment structure further improved.
In terms of regions, key overseas investors remained from the eastern region in the country this year while enterprises in the three northeastern provinces are also becoming increasingly active. From January to May, enterprises in northeast China’s Harbin, Jilin, and Liaoning provinces injected a total of 1.43 billion U.S. dollars to foreign countries, up 88.2 percent year on year.
With the steady growth and healthy development of China's overseas investment, benefits of enterprises which invested in the foreign countries have kept emerging. The operation level of Chinese enterprises investing in the foreign countries has improved steadily. In 2017, over 70 percent of those Chinese enterprises made profit or broke even.
Regarding the trend of China's overseas investment in the second half of 2018, an official with MOC expected that China's overseas investment would continue to grow in H2, with industrial structure optimizing and quality and benefit improving gradually.
According to the MOC official, China would continue to strengthen investment cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road, gear the equipment, technologies and services to relevant countries' demand more effectively. China would further promote international industrial capacity cooperation and regional connectivity, so as to improve the level of bilateral economic and trade cooperation and achieve mutual benefits.
"China's overseas investment this year is expected to exceed 140 billion U.S. dollars, without major risks or reversion of the macroeconomic situation" said an official with NDRC, who was optimistic about the situation of overseas investment throughout the year. (Edited by Ma Xin, maxin11@xinhua.org)
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