Beijing Uses More Foreign InvestmentThe amount of foreign investment used in Beijing totaled US$3.1 billion last year, setting a historical record.The city approved 1,146 foreign-funded enterprises in 2000, up by 77 percent over the previous year. The amount of the contractual value increased by 1.39 times at US$7.3 billion, said Zhou He, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Economic and Foreign Trade Commission. Some 570, or half of the newly approved foreign firms last year, were built with exclusive foreign investment. Projects involving huge investment made up 58 percent of the total. Nearly half of the foreign enterprises set up in 2000 engage in information technology. Eleven multinational companies have set up headquarters in Beijing and 45 others have built agencies in the Chinese capital. Thus far, Beijing has approved the establishment of 15,882 foreign-funded enterprises. Up to the end of last November, 5,335 had begun operation, employing 460,000 people. The industrial output value of these firms totaled 99.3 billion yuan by last October. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |