China continues to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), which grew 26.03% year-on-year to reach $38.8 billion during the first four months of this year.
The FDI in China climbed 15.21% to $8.46 billion in April, down from March growth of 32.9%, Yao Jian, the spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC), told the media here today.
While March saw 2,538 new foreign-invested companies being approved to operate in China, 2,215 foreign-invested companies were approved last month, up 8.21% from the same period in 2010.
China has approved 8,152 new foreign-invested companies over the past four months, a rise of 8.61% year-on-year.
Also China's outbound direct investments hit $13.4 billion during the first four months of 2011, up 17.5% year-on-year, according to Yao.
This brought China's cumulative outbound non-financial direct investments to $272.2 billion as of the end of April, Yao said.
About $4.2 billion or 31.3% of China's total outbound direct investments over the past four months, were channelled into company mergers, he said.
China's overseas contracted projects brought in $24.88 billion in revenues during the same period, up 7.8% year-on-year, according to Yao.
The value of new contracts stood at $43.66 billion, up 19.2% from a year earlier, Xinhua news agency quoted Yao as saying.
About 775,000 Chinese labourers were stationed overseas by the end of April this year, nearly 22,000 less than in the same period last year, according to Yao.
This is partly due to recent unrest in West Asia and North Africa, which resulted in the evacuation of thousands of Chinese nationals.