Record FDI inflows underline China's weight in global economy: FT

WASHINGTON -- Global economic decoupling from China is simply not happening, considering the momentum of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflowing into the country, the Financial Times has reported.

In some critical dimensions, China's integration into the global economy continues to deepen, wrote John Plender, in an opinion piece published Sunday, referring to earlier findings from Nicholas Lardy, a senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

While global FDI plummeted by 35 percent in 2020, inflows into China rose by 6 percent to $149 billion, partly reflecting the country's rapid recovery from COVID-19, wrote Plender, a senior editorial columnist with the newspaper.

Foreign investors also bought $35 billion of Chinese onshore equity stocks and $75 billion of government bonds in the first half of this year, in each case a 50 percent increase over the buoyant pre-epidemic levels in 2019, the newspaper estimated in July, based on data from Bloomberg and Credit Agricole.

In part, that reflects the Chinese leadership's commitment to gradually liberalizing the country's financial system, according to Plender.

Against the background of an appreciating Renminbi, the Chinese currency, "investors have been finding more generous yields in China's bond market than in the United States or Europe," he added.

Rhodium Group, a research company, estimates that by 2020, US investors held $1.1 trillion in equities issued by Chinese companies.