Multinationals to Attend China Trade Fair

More than 20 multinational corporations will participate in the upcoming '99 China Fair for International Investment and Trade, slated for September 8-12 in the eastern port city of Xiamen, Fujian Province.

An official with the Department of Foreign Investment Administration under the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (MOFTEC) said on Wednesday that multinationals attending the fair include such big names as Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Siemens, Canon, Mobil, and Sony.

Corporations planning to set up exhibitions at the fair are involved in motor vehicles and parts, mobile telecommunications, construction materials, power equipment, and family appliances.

The official, who declined to be named, said that all of China' s 31 provincial localities will send delegations to the fair, and there also will be delegations from some ministries and national economic organizations.

Cao Degan, deputy governor of Fujian and vice-chairman of the fair's organizing committee, said at a recent meeting that more attention will be paid to promoting the fair worldwide via many means, including the Internet.

This annual fair is China's only trade and investment event on a nationwide scale. More than 6,000 businesspeople from home and abroad participated in the fair last year.

China registered a decline in overseas investment in terms of both contractual volume and paid-in volume in the first half this year, according to figures released by MOFTEC.

China approved a total of 8,052 new overseas-invested projects between January and June, which represented a drop of 16.71 percent from a year earlier.

The newly approved projects involve 19.39 billion U.S. dollars of contractual overseas investment, a decline of 19.87 percent on a year-on-year basis. The volume of overseas investment already in place was 18.57 billion U.S. dollars for the half, down by 9.21 percent from a year ago.