Globalization to continue with rising cross-border investment: researchers

Globalization will continue to progress, despite shrinking global trade, as companies accelerate cross-border investment to widen their industrial reach, according to researchers.

As the development of science and technology continues to connect the world, and a rising middle class demands better products and services, globalization will not stop and trade will be revitalized, said Long Yongtu, chairman of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) at a globalization conference.

Long, once the chief negotiator for China's WTO accession, said that in essence globalization is created by companies investing overseas and the growth of multinational companies.

Global foreign direct investment grew 38 percent in 2015, due to cross-border mergers and acquisitions, the fastest growth since the financial crisis, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

China has been a strong overseas investor in recent years. China recorded 118 billion U.S. dollars of non-financial outbound direct investment into about 6,000 companies in 160 countries and regions in the first eight months of the year, up 53.3-percent year on year, official data showed.

Twenty years ago, foreign investment in China benefited multinational companies and the Chinese economy, and it is time now for growing Chinese companies to invest overseas to move up the global industrial value chain, said Lu Jinyong, a professor with the University of International Business and Economics.

It is a natural process for companies to go global, but it is crucial to have sound support to offer financial and legal services in overseas investment, said Hu Yuandong, chief representative of the Investment Technology Promotion Office China at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

"It is about obeying global game rules and, more importantly, improving those rules," Hu added. Endi