The total non-financial assets of overseas Chinese companies have exceeded $200 billion, a senior official said in Beijing on Wednesday.
Vice Minister of Commerce Wei Jianguo said China already had more than 10,000 companies abroad and their annual sales totalled $150 billion last year. These companies make profits of $17.7 billion every year and pay $3.5 billion in taxes to their host countries, Wei said.
Statistics with the ministry of commerce show that China's direct overseas investment had been rising at 66 per cent annually between 2001 and 2005.
The accumulated overseas investment had reached $71.22 billion by the end of last September. "China has become an important labour exporter in the construction, textile and sailing sectors," Wei was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency.
Tthe scale of overseas investment remained small for Chinese companies, which currently accounts for only 0.5 per cent of the global direct overseas investment, he added.
Engineering contracts won by Chinese firms account for 2.1 per cent of the total value of such contracts. Chinese labourers working abroad make up only 1.5 per cent of the world total.
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