China has vast space, outstanding advantages to attract foreign investment in long run: top economic planner

An official from China's economy planner said that China has vast space and outstanding advantages to attract foreign investment, despite a recent minor decline in foreign direct investment.

He also highlighted that investing in China means investing in the future, refuting Western media claims of foreign investment retreating from the Chinese market.

China possesses the right characteristics to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) amid a complex global economic landscape, and China's actual utilization of foreign investment remains at a historically high level, Wu Hao, an official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Wu cited data from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which shows that global foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows plunged 18 percent in 2023, as the global FDI inflows dropped after reaching a new high in 2021.

It is normal to see the rise and fall in terms of global cross-border investment, but looking future, China has significant advantages and broad space in attracting foreign investment, Wu added.

China had 53,766 newly established foreign-invested enterprises in 2023, an increase of 39.7 percent over the previous year, but the actual amount of FDI was 1.13 billion yuan ($156 million), a year-on-year decrease of 8.0 percent, data from Ministry of Commerce showed.

Although looking purely at the numbers in 2023, China's scale of attracting foreign investment has fluctuated to a certain extent, a more objective conclusion can be drawn from both "quantitative" and "qualitative" aspects, Wu said.

From a "quantity" perspective, China's actual utilization of foreign investment exceeded 1.1 trillion yuan last year, the third highest level in history. From a "qualitative" perspective, China's foreign investment structure continues to optimize, Wu noted.

Official data showed that in 2023, the proportion of investment in high-tech industries reached 37.4 percent, an increase of 1.3 percentage points from 2022, and the proportion of investment in the manufacturing sector reached 27.9 percent, an increase of 1.6 percentage points.

China has major advantages including market size, industrial chain maturity and policy. As long as China maintains the consistency of its macroeconomic policies and maintain the steady growth of China's economy, it will be the opportunities for the foreign companies, Wang Jun, an expert at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in Beijing, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

To better attract foreign investment, China's State Council, the cabinet, on Tuesday issued a broad plan to attract foreign investment, with targeted measures including expanding market access in the high-tech and financial sectors, facilitating cross-border data flows and promoting international business travel, showing China's determination for further opening-up and is set to boost the confidence of foreign investors.

China is the world's largest market with the greatest growth potential, and will continue to unleash huge demand in advanced manufacturing, new urbanization, and consumption structure, Wu said.

China offers a transparent and stable policy environment and the most complete industrial system in the world, which can provide foreign investment with a highly efficient and reliable industrial supporting system.

Meanwhile, China's increasingly complete infrastructure network, sufficient human resources, and rich innovative application scenarios can create good investment space for foreign investors in new technologies, new industries, and new business formats, Wu said.