Photo taken on Aug. 2, 2021 shows the opening ceremony of the 2021 Global Digital Economy Conference in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)
While global FDI plummeted by 35 percent in 2020, inflows into China rose by 6 percent to 149 billion U.S. dollars, partly reflecting the country's rapid recovery from COVID-19, wrote John Plender, a senior editorial columnist with the Financial Times.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- Global economic decoupling from China is simply not happening, considering the momentum of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflowing into the country, the Financial Times has reported.
In some critical dimensions, China's integration into the global economy continues to deepen, wrote John Plender, in an opinion piece published Sunday, referring to earlier findings from Nicholas Lardy, a senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
While global FDI plummeted by 35 percent in 2020, inflows into China rose by 6 percent to 149 billion U.S. dollars, partly reflecting the country's rapid recovery from COVID-19, wrote Plender, a senior editorial columnist with the newspaper.
A half-finished car is seen at the general assembly workshop of the Changchun production base under the FAW-Volkswagen Automotive Co., Ltd. (FAW-VW) in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, Jan. 5, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)
Foreign investors also bought 35 billion U.S. dollars of Chinese onshore equity stocks and 75 billion U.S. dollars of government bonds in the first half of this year, in each case a 50 percent increase over the buoyant pre-epidemic levels in 2019, the newspaper estimated in July, based on data from Bloomberg and Credit Agricole.
In part, that reflects the Chinese leadership's commitment to gradually liberalizing the country's financial system, according to Plender.
Against the background of an appreciating Renminbi, the Chinese currency, "investors have been finding more generous yields in China's bond market than in the United States or Europe," he added.
Rhodium Group, a research company, estimates that by 2020, U.S. investors held 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars in equities issued by Chinese companies. ■
