To facilitate more overseas investment, the city has taken lead in lifting the restrictions on ownership by overseas partners,which resulted in an additional investment of over US$4 billion by 760 foreign-funded companies in the city.

Recently, the city set up a special center for overseas investors, called Tianjin City's service center for promoting foreign economic and trade, which also serves as the city's center for investment and establishing business by medium and small enterprises from foreign countries and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

So far, the city has set up over 13,000 overseas-funded companies with a contractual investment of more than US$30 billion.

Thanks to the city's efforts in encouraging foreign investment, overseas-funded firms are playing a big role in local exports. In the first quarter of this year, foreign-funded firms exported US$1.88billion worth of products, accounting for 73.8 percent of the city's total.

The city's exports in the period increased by 15.4 percentage points over the national average, according to official reports.

Overseas investors have contributed a lot to the city's fledgling electronics industry.

Last year, 144 overseas-funded electronics companies in the city generated US$62.4 billion in output value, which accounted for 95.4 percent of the city's entire electronics industry.

Tianjin has become one of the largest electronics producers in the country, owing to the contribution of these overseas-funded manufacturers.

(China Daily 05/25/2001)