(People's Daily Online)
Updated: 2007-08-23 17:06

The actual number of enterprises with foreign investment in China grew slowly but their scale continued to expand, according to the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

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By the end of June, China had 280,000 foreign-invested enterprises, with their actual investment reaching US$1.8 trillion and a registered capital of US$1 trillion. Of them, 38,000 invested more than US$10 million, 2,095 more than at the end of last year and taking 13.5 percent of the total number.

As more business fields were opened to foreign investors, the number of exclusively foreign-owned enterprises and foreign-funded joint stock limited companies increased, and that of Chinese-foreign joint ventures and contractual joint ventures decreased.

This is because that foreign investors favor independent, flexible operations of solely funded firms while contractual joint ventures are restricted by some cooperative elements and therefore require higher investment costs, said analysts.

Statistics showed that foreign-funded corporate banks grew rapidly in number, most of them gathering in Shanghai and driving up the finance sector. During the first half of this year ten such banks had a registered capital of US$6.49 billion. There were 220 of them across China, 38 more than at the end of last year and rising 20.9 percent.