China's outbound direct investment (ODI) increased for a 10th straight year to a record 74.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, according to the 2011 Statistical Bulletin on China's Outbound Direct Investment jointly released by the country's Ministry of Commerce, National Bureau of Statistics and State Administration of Foreign Exchange in Beijing on Aug. 30.
Last year, Chinese companies operating overseas paid more than 22 billion U.S. dollars in taxes to host nations, and hired as many as 1.2 million people, according to the statistics.
China's accumulative ODI surpassed 400 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2011, ranking 13th in the world, the report said.
Average annual growth of nearly 45 percent in past decade
China's ODI rose 8.5 percent in 2011 from the previous year, dwarfed by an average annual increase of nearly 45 percent between 2002 and 2011.
"China's ODI has maintained strong growth momentum because its international reserves and exports have increased rapidly over the past 10 years, enabling and also requiring the country to invest overseas," said Mei Xinyu, a research fellow at the Ministry of Commerce.
China's accumulative ODI rose markedly to nearly 424.8 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2011, ranking 13th in the world, up four places from the end of the previous year. The total asset value of Chinese companies operating overseas reached nearly 2 trillion U.S. dollars by the end of last year.
In terms of the results of overseas investment, Shi Ziming, commercial counselor at the Ministry of Commerce's Department of Outward Investment and Economic Cooperation, said that last year, nearly 78 percent of Chinese companies operating overseas made a profit or broke even, and over 22 percent made a loss.
Of the 2,000 overseas companies set up by central state-owned enterprises, nearly 73 percent made a profit or broke even, and over 27 percent made a loss, Shi said.
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