Overseas investment into Chinese manufacturing gained almost 23 percent last year, China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology said today as he hoped to put to bed speculation that escalating tension between the world’s two largest economies was putting off foreign companies.
Overseas firms invested USD41.2 billion into Chinese industry in 2018, Miao Wei said at a press conference hosted by the cabinet’s information office. Chinese manufacturing is pretty much fully open to inbound investment and a bunch of foreign-backed manufacturing projects kicked off last year, he added.
It is a widely held belief that foreign investors have been withdrawing from China amid rising trade frictions with the United States, but many overseas companies are still pumping money into China, Miao said.
The opening up of Chinese industry hit new levels last year as the country cancelled access restrictions for foreign investors looking to break into the local shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing sectors and removed equity limits on car-making joint ventures for special-purpose and new-energy vehicles.
It already has plans to open up its remaining auto-making segments in the near future, at which point its entire manufacturing industry will be open to overseas investment.
Source: Yicai Global
