Scale of FDI in China remains at high level: spokesperson

BEIJING, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- The scale of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China remains at a high level while the structure of investment continues to optimize as high-tech industries attract rising investment, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Thursday.

Noting foreign businesses' ever-growing willingness to invest in China, the MOC spokesperson Shu Jueting said that in the first 10 months of this year, actual FDI, including free trade port investment, from Canada, Britain, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands rose 110.3 percent, 94.6 percent, 90 percent, 66.1 percent, and 33 percent, respectively.

A total of 41,947 new foreign-invested companies were established in China during the first 10 months of 2023, marking a 32.1 percent increase from the same period last year, the MOC said in November.

"China has always been committed to building a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized first-class business environment to better serve foreign investors," Shu said at a press conference held on Thursday in Beijing.

She said many specific measures have been introduced amid government efforts to stabilize foreign investment. "There are also some policies in the process of formulation, such as optimizing the domestic production application procedures for drugs marketed overseas, and standardizing and promoting cross-border data flow, among others."

She said the MOC will strive to expand high-level opening up, align with international high-standard economic and trade rules, steadily promote institutional opening up, actively respond to the demands of foreign-invested enterprises, and facilitate Chinese and foreign personnel exchanges so as to continuously promote foreign investment and optimize services.