China News Service, Beijing, December 18 (Reporter Li Xiaoyu) Recently, the scale of China's foreign investment has declined. However, in an interview with a reporter from China News Service, a Beijing scholar believes that this does not mean that China's attractiveness to global investors has weakened, and "investing in China" is still the trend of the times.
According to official data, China's actual use of foreign capital in the first 10 months of this year was 9,870100 million yuan, down 94%, but still at an all-time high. During the same period, some developed economies increased their investment in China, such as Canada's actual investment in China increased by 110 year-on-year3%, and the year-on-year growth rate of British and French investment in China is also above 90%.
According to the head of the Department of Foreign Investment of the Ministry of Commerce of China, foreign investment sometimes lasts for several years from project negotiation and signing, establishment of enterprises, construction and commissioning, during which foreign investment generally arrives one after another according to the progress of project construction, so the data on attracting foreign investment fluctuates every year.
Analysts believe that compared with the scale of investment, the change in the number of newly established foreign-funded enterprises is actually more valuable for reference. According to official statistics, in the first 10 months, China established 41,947 new foreign-invested enterprises, a year-on-year increase of 321%；In the first three quarters, 68 foreign-invested enterprises were registered in the country90,000 households, an increase of 1 from the end of last year5%。
Gao Lingyun, a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that at a time when the overall world economic growth is slowing down and the geopolitical game is heating up, the total number of new foreign companies and registered foreign companies in China has maintained growth, which shows that China is still strongly attractive to global investors, and "investing in China" is still the mainstream and the general trend.
Since the beginning of this year, many senior executives of multinational companies have frequently set off a "fever for coming to China", and the CIIE and Chain Expo have gathered many applicants, which has also become a vivid footnote to China's attraction to foreign enterprises.
This attraction comes from China's comprehensive strengths. At present, China's economy is recovering steadily, the market scale continues to expand, and many international organizations and institutions such as the International Monetary Organization, the OECD, and the Asian Development Bank have raised their forecasts for China's economic growth this year, which means that foreign companies investing in China are profitable; The perfect infrastructure, the stability of the industrial chain, and the continuous improvement of the business environment have made the normal production and operation of foreign enterprises in China less worried.
In the words of Kai Chen, Chairman of EY China and CEO of Greater China, as the "driver" of the global economy, China's advantages in the development of foreign enterprises are "unique", and a combination of factors gives China a competitive advantage that is difficult for other countries to match.
According to the deployment of the first economic work conference, China will take a series of measures next year to continue to consolidate the basic market of foreign investment, including seriously solving the problems of cross-border data flow and equal participation in procurement, continuing to build a market-oriented, law-based and international first-class business environment, and effectively breaking through the blockages of foreign personnel coming to China for business, study, Xi and tourism.
Shu Jueting, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Commerce, said that in response to the key, difficult and focused issues in the field of foreign investment, the government has recently introduced a number of specific measures, such as the unilateral visa exemption policy for ordinary passport holders from six countries and the facilitation of foreigners' visa applications in China. In addition, policies such as optimizing the application procedures for domestic production of overseas marketed drugs, standardizing and promoting cross-border data flow are also in the process of being formulated.
Zhang Jianping, deputy director of the Academic Committee of the Academy of International Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce of China, said that it is of great significance to consolidate the fundamentals of foreign investment by effectively guiding the expectations of foreign enterprises and making them confident in China's economic growth. China's deployment to continue to promote institutional opening-up, implement the Foreign Investment Law, and facilitate the exchange of foreign business personnel will further enhance the confidence of foreign enterprises to deepen their cultivation in China.
In the view of Zhang Xiaotao, dean of the School of International Economics and ** of the University of Finance and Economics, China will continue to become the most attractive destination for foreign investment in the world by expanding the market scale, improving the business environment, and expanding the dividends of institutional opening-up, and more foreign capital can be expected to flow into China. (ENDS).