The poll by Horizon & Horizonkey was conducted among 314 foreign-funded companies in the three major Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The result indicates that compared with the same period of last year, more foreign-funded firms planned to increase their investment in the next five years and fewer companies intended to cut their investment.

Although the country was still fighting severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the data showed that 55.7 percent of the companies surveyed intended to expand investment in the next five years, and only 3.5 percent planned to decrease.

The poll also indicated that over 80 percent of senior managersfrom these companies were still confident in investing in the Chinese market, with more than half saying they were "fairly confident", one quarter "very confident", and less than 10 percent expressing "little confidence" or "no confidence".

(Xinhua News Agency May 23, 2003)