More and more Chinese businessmen are launching and expanding
their businesses in Southeast Asian countries, counterbalancing
previous capital flows in an overwhelmingly single opposite
direction, officials and businessmen said at an ongoing
exposition.
Mochtar Riady, chairman of Malaysia's renowned Lippo Group, said
Chinese businesses have accumulated an abundance of capital in the
economic boom over the past 30 years, leading to a strong desire to
invest overseas, while some member states of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) wanted investment, especially in
infrastructure projects.
The ASEAN would be "the main destination of China's growing
overseas investment in future", the Chinese-Indonesian billionaire
said at the China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, which is due to close
Wednesday.
ASEAN member states have invested a total of 41.9 billion US
dollars in China since the country began it reform and open-up
drive in late 1978, according to statistics from the Chinese
Ministry of Commerce.
With China's fast development, Chinese investment in ASEAN
countries increased rapidly in recent years. In a single move at
the exposition, China's Guangxi State Farms Group alone inked 42
investment projects with ASEAN enterprises, involving a total value
of 19 billion yuan (2.5 billion US dollars).
So far more than 1,000 Chinese companies have made investment in
ASEAN member countries, mainly in the sectors such as agriculture,
manufacturing, mining, tourism, electricity and infrastructure
construction.
In the first two days of the China-ASEAN Expo which opened on
Sunday, businesses from the two sides reached agreements on 92
projects. Under the pacts, Chinese companies will invest 1.19
billion US dollars in 37 projects in ASEAN countries, while ASEAN
businesses will put 2.81 billion US dollars in the other 55
projects in China.
"Capital flow in both directions, rather than the previous
single-direction movement, has emerged as a new trend within the
China-ASEAN cooperation," said Zhang Jian, a professor of
China-ASEAN study at Guangxi Normal University.
China and ASEAN countries have been pushing hard for the birth
of the world's most populous free trade area in the region targeted
for 2010.
Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan has called on the two sides to
expand investment in both directions within the framework of
regional cooperation.
China and the ASEAN are in talks over easier access for
investors to each other's market, and an agreement is expected as
early as next year, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce
revealed.
(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2007)
