Multinational companies still regard China as important destination: Report

JINAN - Although the global supply chain has entered a new round of reconstruction, China is still an important investment destination for multinational companies around the world, said a report. The report was released by the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce at the third Qingdao Multinationals Summit in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China’s Shandong Province on Sunday. Most foreign manufacturing businesses in China still see China as a major investment destination with investment confidence continuously rising, it said. Against the backdrop of contraction in transnational investment in manufacturing in recent years, China has constantly attracted multinationals’ investments in the manufacturing sector due to its huge market and complete supply chain, said the report. From 2017 to 2021, China’s manufacturing foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows remained stable, while the cross-border investment in the manufacturing industry worldwide suffered turbulence of decrease, it stated. China’s manufacturing sector used 33.73 billion U.S. dollars of foreign investment in 2021, up 8.8 percent year on year. The growth was 1.1 percentage points higher than that for the global manufacturing sector. Multinational manufacturing companies have been moving up the value chain in their China investments over recent years. China’s high-tech manufacturing sector actually used 12.06 billion U.S. dollars of foreign investment in 2021, up from 9.89 billion U.S. dollars in 2017. Its proportion in the whole manufacturing sector rose by 6.3 percentage points to 35.8 percent, according to the report.