NEW YORK, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Foreign firms are continuing to invest in China as it remains a resilient economy and maintains growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic, said a recent report by U.S. media Forbes.

The article, published Sunday on Forbes' website, cited a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which said that China became the world's top recipient of investment flows in 2020.

Noting that U.S. electric carmaker Tesla is "ramping up production in China" and beverage giant PepsiCo Inc. spent 705 million U.S. dollars to buy a Chinese snack brand last year, the article said that Western companies continue to "pour their resources into the rapidly growing economy."

"U.S. and other foreign firms will continue to invest in China as it remains one of the most resilient economies during the global pandemic and as future growth potential there remains stronger than most other major economies," Rhodium Group analyst Adam Lysenko, who was interviewed by Bloomberg last month, was quoted in the article.

As the Chinese government instituted "strict, large-scale lockdown measures in early 2020," the article said, "China went back to work, manufacturing picked up, and as a result China was the only major economy to report economic expansion in 2020."

Global foreign direct investment (FDI) plunged by 42 percent in 2020, while FDI flows to China rose by 4 percent to 163 billion dollars, making the country the world's largest recipient in 2020, followed by the United States, according to the UNCTAD report on Sunday.