Firms with foreign investors are playing a crucial role in restructuring China's exports, the Xinhua-run Shanghai Securities News said Friday.

Increasingly, China is exporting high-tech products rather than labor-intensive and high-energy-consumption goods.

In the first semester, China's exports of high-tech products grew 32 percent, making up 28.8 percent of total exports, figures from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) show. Exports of machinery and electronic products grew 30.5 percent, accounting for 56.9 percent of the total.

Exports of steel billet and coke, high-energy-consumption products, declined 36.5 percent and 10.7 percent respectively year on year. Exports of labour-intensive products such as textiles, toys and footwear have also slowed.

"Companies with foreign investors are playing a key role in optimizing China's export structure," said Zhao Yumin, a researcher with the Institute for International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Zhao attributed the improvement in China's export structure mainly to firms with foreign investors, saying "without the contribution of foreign-funded companies, China would be unable to reorient its exports towards electronics and machinery and the high-tech sector in less than 10 years."

In the first semester, foreign-funded companies contributed 80 percent of China's high-tech exports but only one third of China's exports of primary products, labour-intensive and low-tech products.

Source: Xinhua