China received $650 bln of direct foreign investment in 10 years

Direct foreign investment in China totaled $653 billion in the 2001-2010 period, the country’s statistics agency said on Sunday.

Yao Jingyuan, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said direct foreign investment in the economy grew by 9.5% a year on average, Xinhua news agency said.

In 2010, China, the world’s second largest economy, received 125% more of direct foreign investment than in 2001 when the country just joined the World Trade Organization, Yao Jingyuan said.

China’s foreign trade totaled $15.7 trillion in the same period, he told a conference on China’s foreign economic ties in Ningbo in northeastern China.

When faced with the global financial crisis in 2008, Chinese authorities decided to revise the economic development model by cutting exports and putting more emphasis on domestic demand and domestic investment sources.

Yu Bin of the State Council Development Research Center told the conference that the country had all the chances to maintain growth by encouraging domestic and keeping foreign demand for its products.

However, he said that economic development could slow down from 2013 and predicted that China’s GDP would grow by an average of 9% a year.

BEIJING, June 5 (RIA Novosti)

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