"By the end of June this year, China had set up 6,758 enterprises overseas with a total investment of 13.2 billion dollars, of which 8.9 billion was Chinese capital," said Shi at a press conference hosted by the media center for the ongoing 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Meanwhile, the total business volume for China's overseas project contracting and labor cooperation projects had reached 97.2 billion dollars, with 475,000 Chinese working overseas in various service export projects at the end of June, a sharp increase of 432,000 compared with the figure at the end of 1989, he added.

The minister said that the areas in which China has made its overseas investment have expanded from trade, shipping and restaurant business to manufacturing and processing, resource exploitation, project contracting, agricultural cooperation and research and development.

The modes of overseas investment by Chinese enterprises, which in the past only opened some overseas representative offices, now vary from setting up plants to export China-made equipment and materials, trans-national acquisition and merger, overseas stock listing to establishing overseas research and development centers or industrial parks, Shi noted.

Chinese personnel sent to work overseas in service export projects used to be ordinary laborers and technicians, but now they include all kinds of professionals like hi-tech engineers and senior managerial staff, he added.

(Xinhua News Agency November 14, 2002)