CRI听力:Foreign Investment Still Favors China

Addressing at the 3-day China Development Forum, Chinese Commerce minister Gao Hucheng says that thought direct investment into the country declined last year, China remains one of the top countries in the world to invest in.

"The global trans-national direct investment dropped eight percent in 2014. However, China received more overseas investment with a growth of 1.7 percent. Overseas investment still favors China and chooses China as its destination. The trend to invest in China has not changed."

Some 810-thousand companies have been formed in China through foreign money.

Total investments have hit 1.5-trillion US dollars.

While impressive, Gao Hucheng says the government is moving to try to shift the investments into the service sector.

"The proportion of overseas investment into the service sector hit 55.4 percent last year. This is a 22 percent increase compared to what has been normally thrown into the industrial manufacturing sector. The service sector has become a new field of growth for both current and future overseas investment in China."

At the same time, Gao Hucheng says the government is working to try to widen market access for foreign investment.

He says this is going to include a revision of the legal code to allow more market access to foreign investment.

"The construction of our free trade zones is opening up the service sector to overseas investment in a number of key areas, such as the financial and medical sectors. We're working to try to gain more experience so we can open up a wider range areas in the service sector across China."

The Chinese government is hoping that over the next 5-years, half of the cargo shipped into China will be handled in free trade zones.

Just under one-third of shipping in China flows through the FTZ's at the moment.

For CRI, I'm Yu Yang.