According to statistics published by the Ministry of Commerce,
by the end of 2005, China had a net volume of direct overseas
investment totaling US$43.9 billion (excluding finance); the
accumulated sales volume of its overseas contracting projects
topped US$135.8 billion.?
Merger and acquisition of overseas enterprises -- mostly
telecommunications, automobiles and resource development -- has
become one of China's main overseas investment channels. In the
past, enterprise acquisition in China was either one Chinese
domestic enterprise buying another, or a foreign-funded company
buying a Chinese domestic enterprise, and the deal was generally
less than US$1 billion. But today, a merger or acquisition
transaction normally exceeds US$1 billion. The largest China's
computer company Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC business in December
2004, China National Petroleum Corporations purchase of Petro
Kazakhstan Inc. in October 2005, were all large cross-country
merger and acquisition projects.
