Though the absolute amount in the introduction of foreign direct investment into China in the recent two years indicates to have overtaken successively the amount injected into the US, numbering the first in the world, yet the Foreign Direct Investment Stock has been greatly overestimated, Huang Hai, assistant to minister of the Ministry of Commerce pointed out 7 December.

The foreign direct investment used by the Chinese people averages far below the world level, said he, China should adhere for a long time to the policy for enlarging the objective in the use of foreign direct investment. At the International Symposium on the Three Years of China's Joining the WTO held jointly by Shanghai Foreign Trade Institute and German Adenauer Foundation, Huang Hai said, since China has no statistics in terms of the foreign direct investment stock the conception of "accumulated actual use of foreign capital" has been popularly employed instead. Actually, the figure hasn't reflected such a situation as the termination of operation, depreciation and withdrawal of the foreign capital by foreign invested enterprises and so it has obviously overestimated the foreign direct investment stock in China. According to the estimation of experts, the foreign direct investment stock was roughly added up to USD 250 billion at the end of last year, only half of the USD 501.4 billion, the amount of foreign capital actually used in the same period. To make a calculation based on this figure, the use of the foreign direct investment stock per head averages a mere 200 US dollars in China, which is far below the USD 1178, the world average amount of foreign direct investment stock in 2002, and far more below the average amount of USD 5330 of the developed countries, and even lags behind that of USD 480 of the developing countries.

Huang Hai said, even those developed countries with great amount of exported capitals they still have to practice the policy encouraging the foreign investment in order to enhance the industry structure in their own homelands. For the moment, the foreign direct investment in China will not bring about any risk and what we have to be careful about is the rapid drain away of the foreign direct investment. Therefore, China should stick to the policy in which the expansion of using foreign investment is made an objective for a long time to come and in the meanwhile to improve and optimize ceaselessly the structure in the use of the foreign capital. Up to the end of last October, China has accumulatively approved 500,000 enterprises directly invested by foreign capitals with a contracted foreign capital amounting to USD 1.06 trillion, of which the actual use of foreign capital amounting to 555.25 billion in the US dollars. For the moment, the foreign capital takes about one tenth of the annual asset investment in China and the import and export volume of the foreign invested enterprises makes up more than half of the national foreign trade and the tax collection up to around 20 percent and an employment of some 22 million.

By People's Daily Online