As learned from the Ministry of Commerce China has preliminarily established a "going global" facilitating policy system that adapts to the national conditions. Considerable development has been made in the overseas investment area, which shows five major features: regions and industries are distributed widely; resource exploitation shows major improvement; processing trade develops rapidly; operating body is expanding; investment means are diversifying.
An official with the Ministry of Commerce commented on these five features as: first regions and industries are distributed widely. The situation has developed from the 1980s when they were concentrated in a few developed countries such as the US, Europe and Japan and Hong Kong and Macao, to investment being expanded to neighboring countries and numerous developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries in East Europe. The investment scope is being expanded continuously from a few areas such as foreign trade, shipping and catering in the early days to state-encouraged areas such as processing and manufacturing, resource utilization, project contracting, agricultural cooperation and R&D.
Second, overseas resource exploitation has made positive progress. Until the end of 2003 China has participated in 58 overseas oil and gas projects. Actual Chinese investment has exceeded $6 billion and sales revenue topped $5 billion. China has taken part in 10 important overseas mineral projects with a total actual Chinese investment of $1.008 billion. Seventy one overseas deep-sea fishing projects have been established with $108 million Chinese investment. There have been nearly 2,200 registered boats by the year-end. Foreign agricultural cooperation has started.
Third, overseas processing trade is developing rapidly. By the end of 2003 there have been about 500 overseas processing trade companies registered or put on records by the Ministry of Commerce, with a contracted Chinese investment of $1.307 billion. They are mainly engaged in textile, home appliance, mechanical and electrical, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.
Fourth, the operating body is growing stronger rapidly and large companies play a significant role. As for now China has had 30,000 various companies engaged in transnational investment and operation. Among them 1,600 have acquired qualifications for contracting overseas projects and running foreign labor cooperation. Some of the large companies have taken an embryonic form of transnational companies.
Fifth, investment means are becoming increasingly diversified and operating level is gradually raised. More and more companies are beginning to adopt means such as transnational merge and acquisition and equity swap to invest overseas. In 2003 Chinese companies made an overseas investment of $834 million in the form of transnational merge and acquisition, which accounted for 40 percent of the contracted Chinese investment that year. A growing number of Chinese companies make overseas investment to purchase sales network, concessions and to establish R&D centers.
