China remains among top three global investors for 9th year
Outbound investment rises 11.1%, creating new opportunities: expert
Visitors tour the 26th China International Fair for Investment and Trade in Xiamen, East China's Fujian Province, on September 8, 2026. Photo: Yin Yeping/GT
China's outbound direct investment maintained robust growth in 2025, with Chinese companies expanding their global presence while directing more capital into emerging sectors including the green and digital sectors, according to official data released on Wednesday.
The sustained growth reflects Chinese companies' rising global competitiveness and their increasing ability to allocate resources worldwide and participate in the international division of labor, while deeper investment cooperation is also creating new opportunities for host economies, a Chinese expert said.
China's outbound direct investment flows climbed 11.1 percent to $213.58 billion in 2025, with its investment stock standing at $3.4 trillion, keeping the country among the world's top three investors for nine straight years. China accounted for 7.4 percent of global outward investment, according to data jointly released by the Ministry of Commerce, the National Bureau of Statistics and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Wednesday.
China's outbound investment covered 18 sectors of the national economy and was mainly concentrated in leasing and business services, wholesale and retail trade, manufacturing, and finance. In recent years, investment has steadily expanded into green and low-carbon sectors, the digital economy and green mineral resources, the data showed.
The continued growth of China's outbound direct investment shows that Chinese companies' global operations are entering a deeper stage of development, Hu Qimu, professor at the Maritime Silk Road Institute of Huaqiao University, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"Their overseas expansion has gradually moved beyond simply exploring markets to industrial chain coordination, technological cooperation, green transformation and the digital economy," Hu said.
Chinese companies' global footprint and deeper integration into regional and global economies have helped strengthen their competitiveness while fueling industrial growth in host economies. Such investment also underpins the stability and security of global supply chains.
By the end of 2025, Chinese investors had set up 58,000 overseas enterprises across 189 countries and regions. Those overseas entities employed 2.965 million foreign workers.
Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative delivered solid results in 2025. Chinese firms invested $46.05 billion directly in Belt and Road partner countries last year, equivalent to 21.6 percent of China's total outbound direct investment flow. Around 22,000 overseas enterprises have been established in these countries, with related investment stock reaching $407.25 billion.
Against the backdrop of continued uncertainties surrounding the global economic recovery, some countries are pushing so-called supply chain "de-risking" while introducing more investment and trade restrictions, Hu said.
In this context, Chinese companies' continued expansion of international investment and industrial cooperation will help facilitate cross-border flows of capital, technology and production factors and strengthen industrial ties among different economies, according to Hu.
The growth momentum has continued into 2026. From January to July, China's outbound direct investment across all industries reached 684.51 billion yuan, up 2.8 percent year-on-year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Commerce and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on August 25.
"The year-on-year growth in outbound direct investment shows that Chinese companies are actively seizing opportunities brought by economic globalization and exploring effective ways of cooperation with various parties through overseas investment," Zhou Mi, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times.
"Chinese companies are willing to share their strengths in technology and management with trading partners and build more efficient investment links. In doing so, China's outbound investment has helped strengthen local industrial capacity, support economic growth and create more jobs," Zhou said, noting that such open and mutually beneficial cooperation is particularly valuable at a time of heightened global economic turbulence and uncertainty.
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