By the end of 2004 China had had a net volume of direct overseas
investment of US$37 billion (excluding finance), and an
accumulative business amount of US$114 billion had been achieved
from China's external contracting projects.??
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In September 2002, China's TCL Corporation purchased the Schneider
Company, a German TV set manufacturer. In 2003 TCL teamed with
Thomson, the biggest French consumer electronics company, to
establish TCL-Thomson to become the world's largest TV set producer
with an output capacity of 18 million sets a year. The Haier Group,
China's largest producer of household electronic appliances, has
expanded capacity at its US refrigerator plant in South Carolina
from 400,000 to 500,000 units a year, in addition to setting up 13
factories in Europe and South America. The Lenovo Group, China's
largest computer company, also expanded its overseas market
rapidly; in December 2004 it bought IBM's personal computer
business at the price of US$1.25 billion, thus becoming the world's
third biggest PC provider, after Dell and HP.
