China Releases Report on Overseas-Funded Enterprises

A report on the past decade of development of overseas-funded enterprises in China has been released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

From 1989 to 1998, the numbers of companies and employees and investment in the sector all recorded average year-on-year growth rates of 33 percent, the report said.

According to figures revealed in the report, a total of 227,800 overseas-funded enterprises had been set up in China by the end of 1998, involving an investment of 774.2 billion U.S. dollars and employing 5.87 million employees.

Among the overseas-funded enterprises, joint ventures make up the majority. But the number of firms exclusively funded by overseas investors has shown a huge increase in recent years, the report said.

The report disclosed that 75 percent of the overseas-funded enterprises are in the manufacturing industry, while only 2.4 percent are engaged in agriculture.

"By the end of 1998, some 86.6 percent of overseas-funded enterprises were clustered in eastern China, but the number of such enterprises set up in the western areas within the decade grew at a yearly rate of 44.7 percent, 14 percentage points higher than in the east," the report says.

According to the report, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the United States and Japan are the biggest overseas investors in China's inland regions.

During the period, the United States alone set up over 19,000 enterprises in China, ranking first among overseas investors.

These firms involved a total capital of 25.3 billion U.S. dollars.

China's entry to the World Trade Organization will provide the overseas-funded enterprises with more opportunities for further development, as the country is making its investment policies more open and transparent to meet the WTO standards, the report said, predicting that more overseas investment will flock into a variety of fields, such as banking, insurance, stocks, legal services, accounting and medicine.

The report was published by the China Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House.



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