China's four FTZs attracting overseas investors

China's free trade zones (FTZs) in Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin and Fujian have shown a significant effect in attracting overseas investment, Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Chinese Ministry of Commerce, told the reporter in an interview.

The above-mentioned four FTZs further expanded the opening up areas, transformed government functions, improved the trade and investment facilitation, accelerated financial innovation and strengthened regulation systems.

In the two months since late April till now, 754 foreign-invested enterprises have set up in the four FTZs surpassing the record, which contracted foreign investment 42.1 billion yuan.

This year, the scale of foreign investment in China continues to expand and the quality achieves further improvement. Foreign investment mainly involves in three aspects.

Firstly, the industrial structure of foreign investment has further optimized. In the first half of this year, foreign investment in service sector increased by 23.6 percent and became the main growth point of China's foreign investment. Meanwhile, foreign investment in the high-end manufacturing sector maintained growth in the areas of communications equipment, chemical agents and electronic device manufacturing.

Cross-border mergers and acquisitions accounted for a substantial increase. In the first half of this year, 641 foreign-invested enterprises have been set up by mergers and acquisitions. The proportion of the actual use of foreign capital increased from 4.8 percent in the same period of last year to 19.3 percent this year.

Multinational companies have enhanced efforts in R & D of localization and are actively involved in innovation. In the first half of this year, 795 foreign-invested enterprises were set up in the area of scientific research and integrated technical services. The amount of foreign capital actually used is 2.57 billion US dollars. R & D activities of TNCs are mainly concentrated in the fields of automobile manufacturing, communications and network technology, biological medicine, new materials and smart homes etc. These will inject new vitality into the development of China's strategic emerging industries and people's innovation.