Chinese investors facing roadblocks investing abroad

China’s investors are facing increasingly wary regulators in foreign governments – and a Chinese government determined to control where they put their money. The first half of 2017 saw a total of $72.6 billion of outbound M&A from China. That is far below Chinese outbound M&A of $129.3 billion in the first half of 2016. Among the forces driving the sober forecasts and sharp decrease are the Chinese government’s crackdown on what it has described as “irrational” overseas deals that don’t relate to investors’ core businesses. On Friday, Chinese officials published official guidelines for overseas investment for the first time. The new rules will restrict investment in sectors such as hotels and sports teams, but not technologies such as computer chips, according to The Wall Street Journal. Also likely to influence Chinese M&A investing are Western governments’ moves to block Chinese companies from gaining too much control over domestic infrastructure and branching into industries where Chinese ownership might raise national-security concerns.