China Attracts More Overseas InvestmentBy the end of last month, China had used a total of US$320.6 billion, a senior official from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation said at a seminar in Wuhan recently.Ma Xiuhong, assistant minister of the ministry said that foreign investors from over 180 countries and regions have established some 349,500 joint ventures or their solely owned enterprises in China by the end of last month. Contractual volume of investment amounted to US$632.3 billion and a total of US$320.6 billion had arrived. China ranks first in using overseas capital among developing countries for seven years in a row. In 1999, it drew US$40.4 billion of overseas investment, ranking third in the world. Taxes paid by overseas-funded businesses increased by 33.78 percent, accounting for 16 percent of the total industrial and commercial taxes in China. By the end of 1999, the overseas-funded enterprises employed 20 million people, accounting for some ten percent of all urban workers in China. Statistics show that in the first five months of this year, over 7,700 overseas-funded enterprises were established, with and aggregate contractual investment amounting to US$18.2 billion, up 22 percent and 25 percent respectively over the same period last year. |
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