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FDI in China Turns to Tech-intensive Industries: UN Report
China has attracted more and more transnational enterprises to invest in tech-intensive industries, according to the World Investment Report 2001 (WIR2001) published lately by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Beijing.
According to WIR 2001, China's foreign direct investment (FDI) has experienced ceaseless changes during the past 20 years. The FDI in China were mostly concentrated on labor-intensive industries in 1980s, turned to capital-intensive industries in early 1990s, and then further tech-intensive industries in recent years.
Currently, nearly 400 enterprises out of the World 500 Strongest have invested in more than 2,000 projects in China. World-leading manufacturers on PC, electronic products, telecommunication equipment, pharmaceutics, petrochemical industry, and power equipment, have expanded their production network to China. And transnational enterprises have set up over 100 research and development centers in China, the report said.
As a result of the soaring FDI in tech-intensive industries in China, China's exports on high-tech production of foreign affiliates also increased from US$4.5bn in 1996 to US$29.8bn in 2000, accounting for 81 percent of China's total high-tech production exports. The report also pointed out that since the late 1990s, China has tobogganed the imports of the complete sets of advanced equipment, and instead replaced it with acquiring foreign technologies from FDI. The FDI has become not only a drive for increasing high-tech production exports from China, but also an important means taking in foreign advanced technologies.
By PD Online staff member Huang Ying
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