Photo taken on Sept. 30, 2020 shows the street view of the Lujiazui area of Pudong, east China's Shanghai. (Xinhua/Wang Xiang)
BEIJING, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Despite the renewed COVID-19 cases and softened transnational investment activities, China has achieved rapid growth in actual use of foreign capital since 2022.
"Foreign investors, including the European Union (EU) investors, remain confident about the Chinese market and hope to further deepen investment in China," said Shu Jueting, a spokesperson with the Ministry of Commerce, adding that China has been supporting economic globalization and will unswervingly promote high-level opening-up and offer more market, investment and growth opportunities to enterprises from all over the world.
-- Foreign investors continue increasing investment in China
Foreign investors keep increasing investment in China, which is a vivid demonstration of their optimism about the Chinese market.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, the actual use of foreign capital in China reached 892.74 billion yuan from January to August 2022, up 16.4 percent from the same period last year on a comparable basis, equivalent to 138.41 billion U.S. dollars, up 20.2 percent year on year.
In terms of the sources, the investment from the EU rose by 123.7 percent year on year, while that from the Republic of Korea, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom grew by 58.9 percent, 30.3 percent, 26.8 percent and 17.2 percent respectively.
While the scale of foreign capital in China continues growing, the structure of foreign invested industries is being optimized. In the first eight months, the actual use of foreign capital in high-tech industries witnessed a year-on-year increase of 33.6 percent. Among them, the high-tech manufacturing industry and the high-tech service industry recorded growth of 43.1 percent and 31 percent respectively in the actual use of foreign capital.
-- Key foreign-funded projects make good progress on the whole
In June 2022, an agreement on the establishment of the Airbus China Research Center in Suzhou Industrial Park was signed. Focusing on research on and development of hydrogen energy infrastructure, the center will provide global research and development innovation services for Airbus in advanced manufacturing, electrification, future passenger cabins and new technologies.
In July, BASF SE decided to build an integrated base in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province. After completion, the base will become the third largest integrated production base of BASF in the world.
Shu Jueting introduced that to better serve these projects, the Ministry of Commerce, together with relevant departments, has established a special task force.
"At present, key foreign-funded projects have made good progress on the whole. Such projects as the BASF (Guangdong) integrated base and the BMW Brilliance's automobile plant in Shenyang have been put into operation," said Shu Jueting.
The special task force will strengthen full-process services and all-round guarantees, so as to better play the leading role of large-scale foreign-funded projects, and actively contribute to promoting foreign investment growth and stabilizing the overall economic market, Shu added.
-- More efforts have been made to improve and increase foreign investment
A research from China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) showed that in the first half of 2022, 19 percent of European companies have expanded their production and business scale in China, while 65 percent maintained their current operational scale. Besides, 15 percent reduced their scale, and less than one percent stopped their existing production and business.
To put more effort into maintaining the stability in foreign trade and foreign investment, a plan has been made by the State Council. The plan stresses the necessity of strengthening the provision of factors of production and advancing the implementation of a clutch of key foreign-funded projects.
Meng Wei, a spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said that the commission will join hands with relevant departments to promptly roll out specific measures. Focusing on the manufacturing industry, China will promote the resolution of the outstanding problems currently faced by foreign-invested enterprises, as well as strengthen the active connection with foreign-invested enterprises and their upstream and downstream enterprises.
(Edited by Bao Nuomin with Xinhua Silk Road, baonuomin@xinhua.org)
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