A top decision-making group headed by President Xi Jinping decided on Monday that Beijing would enhance its monitoring and supervision of overseas investment deals to safeguard China’s economic interests and national security. The latest order from the Central Leading Group for Comprehensive Reform, one of the many groups Xi has created to centralize decision-making around him, comes at a time the government is getting tough on the country’s big dealmakers, especially private enterprises that have borrowed heavily to finance overseas acquisitions, the South China Morning Post reports. It is the first time the top leadership has explicitly linked outbound investment with national security. “The safety of overseas businesses and outbound investments is an important part of [securing] China’s overseas interests,” the official Xinhua news agency reported, summarizing the leading group’s decision. China’s history of aggressive overseas investment to secure energy and raw materials is checkered with failures and losses from Australia to Venezuela.
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