Background: Foreign Funds Play Big Role in China's EconomyStatistics show that foreign investment is playing an increasingly important role in China's economic development.In 1999 for example, the industrial added value produced by foreign-funded enterprises accounted for 20.6 percent of the nation's total, with the increase rate exceeding the nation's average. Taxes paid by foreign-funded enterprises rose by 33.78 percent and the total volume amounted to 16 percent of the country's total industrial and commercial taxes. The import and export volume of foreign-funded enterprises was 174.5 billion U.S. dollars, or 48.38 percent of the nation's total.Foreign-funded enterprises are also important in increasing China's foreign currency reserves. Apart from the huge amount of capital that they have brought into China, foreign-funded enterprises have also brought advanced technology, management and talented personnel. Approximately 20 million Chinese people, or 10 percent of China's urban workers, were working for foreign-funded enterprises by the end of last year. A report from the China Academy of Social Sciences said that it is improbable that China's economy would have maintained a 10 percent growth rate over the past decade if China had not opened its door to foreign funds. China will make more efforts to lure foreign funds in the new century, the report said. As of July this year, investors from more than 180 countries and regions have established 353,700 foreign-funded enterprises in China. Contractual investment exceeded 641.7 billion dollars and foreign funds used amounted to 327.7 billion dollars. |
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