High-tech boom helps attract foreign investment

Years of efforts aimed at promoting the country's opening-up and continuously expanding market access for foreign enterprises have gradually paid off. Foreign-funded enterprises now contribute one-third of China's foreign trade, one-fourth of its value-added industrial output, and one-seventh of its tax revenues, and have created more than 30 million jobs over the past five years. It is little wonder therefore that the government should highly value foreign direct investment and always try its best to improve the business environment for foreign capital, so as to make the country a safe and promising destination for foreign investors.

The country's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) set the target of attracting a total of $700 billion in foreign investment, with remarkable progress to be made in both the quantity and quality of utilized foreign investment. Despite the challenges posed by the rise of protectionism and unilateralism in recent years, the utilized foreign investment in China reached $708.73 billion by the end of June, suggesting the country has already achieved its five-year foreign investment target, ahead of schedule.

Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce released on the weekend also indicate that in the first half of this year the number of newly established foreign-invested companies increased by 11.7 percent year-on-year to 30,014, as the country continues to attract foreign capital into high-tech industries such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce, pharmaceuticals and high-end manufacturing.