Three highlights reflect China's stronger attraction to foreign investment

(Economic Observation) Three highlights reflect China's stronger attraction to foreign investment

　　China News Agency, Beijing, January 18th, title: Three highlights reflect China's stronger attraction to foreign investment

　　China News Agency reporter Li Xiaoyu

　　The data on China's actual use of foreign capital in 2022 was announced on the 18th. This "transcript" has three important points to watch.

The actual use of foreign capital grew steadily

　　According to official data, China's actual use of foreign capital in 2021 will exceed 1.1 trillion yuan (RMB, the same below), a year-on-year increase of 14.9%.

Based on such a high base, China's actual use of foreign capital in 2022 will reach 1,232.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 6.3% on a comparable basis, maintaining a steady growth.

　　The main reason why China can continue to remain a strong attraction to global investors is the stability of its macro economy and market size.

In 2022, despite the combination of unexpected factors such as the epidemic and the Ukrainian crisis, China's economic aggregate is still expanding, exceeding 120 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3%.

Against the background of the overall sluggishness of the world economy, this growth rate is remarkable.

　　In addition, China was still the world's second largest consumer market and the largest online retail market last year, and the advantages of a super-large-scale market are still obvious.

The expansion of the market is one of the main reasons for foreign companies to increase capital in China.

　　The steady growth of China's actual use of foreign capital is also in line with the new trend of global cross-border direct investment.

Lu Lei, deputy director of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said a few days ago that from a geographical perspective, the attractiveness of emerging economies to global cross-border direct investment has increased significantly.

EU investment in China has grown significantly

　　In 2022, the EU's investment in China will increase by 92.2% year-on-year. This growth rate is quite eye-catching among China's major investment sources.

Among them, Germany's investment in China increased by 52.9% year-on-year.

　　In recent years, there have been "disharmonious sounds" in China-EU relations, such as fabricating the so-called "China threat" and hyping competition with China.

Analysts believe that the sharp increase in EU investment in China in 2022 shows that the close economic ties between China and Europe are the result of globalization and market laws. This kind of economic complementarity is beneficial to the enterprises and people of both sides. benefited a lot.

　　In the words of Shu Jueting, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce, China and Europe have formed a "strong economic symbiotic relationship".

　　Wei Jianguo, former vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce of China, said in an interview with a reporter from China News Agency that the United States continues to politicize economic and trade issues and undermine market rules, and its attractiveness to European companies for investment is actually declining.

In this context, as China makes greater efforts to attract and utilize foreign capital, a large number of capital, talents, and technologies in Europe are expected to continue to move eastward in the future.

Central and western regions are becoming more attractive to foreign investment

　　According to official statistics, the actual use of foreign capital in central and western China will increase by 21.9% and 14.1% year-on-year respectively in 2022, 15.6 and 7.8 percentage points higher than the national average.

Among them, the actual use of foreign capital in Shanxi and Henan provinces has more than doubled compared with 2021.

　　In recent years, China has been encouraging foreign capital to flow into the central and western regions to promote local technological progress and industrial upgrading.

Judging from the data, the central and western regions are being favored by foreign companies, which is of great significance to enhancing the coordination of China's economic development.

　　Yang Changyong, a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Economics of the China Academy of Macroeconomics, believes that there is still a relatively large gap between China's eastern coastal areas and central and western regions in terms of opening up, and problems of imbalance and incoordination still exist.

In the future, measures such as the joint construction of the "Belt and Road" and the promotion of the construction of the new land-sea corridor in the west should be adopted to make the central and western regions more and better integrated into the overall situation of opening up to the outside world.

　　Nowadays, many international organizations and institutions predict that China's economic growth will rebound significantly in 2023, becoming an important driving force for global economic growth.

Zhao Ping, deputy director of the Research Institute of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, said that this indicates that as the economy recovers, China will create more investment opportunities, and the value and attractiveness of the Chinese market to global investors will further increase.

(Finish)