Foreigners invest more in China’s advanced manufacturing even as total FDI drops
- First-half commerce figures show foreign investors ‘proactively managing their investment plans across industries’ during a time of FDI ‘adjustments’
Despite an overall drop in foreign direct investment (FDI), China says more funds from overseas are being channelled into its advanced manufacturing sector.
“While FDI in the first half of this year was at a relatively high level if we look at it over the span of the past decade, frankly the scale of the investment has dropped on a year-on-year basis, mainly due to a high base from last year,” said Zhu Bing, director of the Foreign Investment Administration under the Ministry of Commerce, at a press briefing on Friday.
From January to June, FDI in China saw a 29.1 per cent year-on-year drop to 498.9 billion yuan (US$69 billion), according to official figures.
However, investment in manufacturing increased by 2.4 percentage points, totalling 141.86 billion yuan during the period and accounting for 28.4 per cent of all FDI in the first half of the year.
In particular, FDI in hi-tech manufacturing reached 63.75 billion yuan – also a 2.4 percentage point increase from the same period a year prior.
Zhu said the numbers show that foreign investors are “proactively managing their investment plans across industries”, and that China’s FDI landscape has entered a period of “adjustments”.
