Vice president calls on Chinese firms to boost foreign investment

Vice President Xi Jinping Tuesday encouraged Chinese companies to expand overseas investment as the country became the fifth largest global investor.

"We are stepping up efforts to boost various forms of overseas investment cooperation and develop our own multinational companies," Xi said at the opening of the Second World Investment Forum, sponsored by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

China ranks as the fifth largest global investor in outbound direct investment (ODI) with a total volume of 56.5 billion U.S. dollars, figures released Sunday by the Ministry of Commerce showed.

"In recent years, China has worked in line with the different stages of opening-up... and adopted new ways of conducting overseas investment and cooperation," Xi said.

The country had supported its enterprises in developing international operations in research and development, production and distribution.

Xi said China was working to support top enterprises to establish international networks for sales distribution.

As of 2009, Chinese companies had set up 13,000 overseas enterprises with overall assets exceeding 1 trillion U.S. dollars.