The foreign capital invested in the manufacture section has been controlled in China in the first half of this year; however China is still expecting foreign capital to play an important role in transforming economic growth mode in China.

On the Forum of Social Responsibility of Enterprise with Foreign Investment in China held on 27^th, Wei Jianguo, the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Commerce said that China will further its strict control over the foreign investment in industries with high energy consumption and high pollution and resource-oriented industry. “The Ministry of Commerce will encourage the foreign capital to be invested in hi-tech industry, high-end manufacture industry, service industry and banking industry.” However, Zhang Yansheng, the Director of Foreign Economic Research Institute of the State Development and Reform Commission held that through product transformation and technical progress, the enterprises with foreign investment can reduce energy consumption as well as become the model for optimizing energy consumption. 

As quoted by the Ministry of Commerce, in the first half of this year, the foreign investment in the manufacture section in China reached US$ 17 billion, 4.5% lower than that for the same period in the previous year. Its percentage in the total foreign investment was lowered to 56%. However, behind the nice scene, the transfer of international production is still increasing the energy consumption scale in China, which is quite opposite to the objective of economic growth in China. 

In the past 30 years, the fast development of direct foreign investment has equipped China as a link in the world industrial chain. Up to the end of June this year, the actual accumulated used foreign capital had passed US$ 750 billion. 480 of world top-500 had invested in China to establish enterprises or institutions.

In addition to the huge market, the enterprises with foreign investment usually take the advantage of cheap labor and resource for export-oriented production and look China as its base for labor-intensive commodity production to produce elementary products for other countries and regions for the advanced production activities. Nevertheless, in front of resource restriction and environment pressure, those enterprises are also facing the challenge from the transformation of trade and investment encouraging mechanism in China.