China's cheap, high-quality labor resources make it the best choice
for foreign investment, said a senior Chinese trade official Friday
in Beijing.
Long Yongtu, vice-minister of Foreign Trade and Economic
Cooperation, who also led negotiations for China's World Trade
Organization accession, said in his address to the 2002 Conference
of Chinese Entrepreneurs that China will increasingly take
advantage of its cheap labor to attract foreign investment.
Long said the conclusion was drawn from a research paper written by
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
which points out that China's labor force has two "incomparable"
advantages.
Approximately 100 million persons in China's rural areas are
"waiting" to be transformed into urban workers, according to the
OECD paper.
The paper further explained that when the cost of labor in
developed eastern China rises, investors will still be able to
obtain cheap labor from less-developed central or western
China.
Cheap labor will always be available from some part of the country,
which makes China one of the world's major providers of cheap
labor, the paper said.
Long stressed that China's labor force is not only cheap, but also
of good quality.
According to official statistics, China produces 800,000
engineering graduates annually, which "lays a solid foundation for
China to ensure the quality of its labor force", Long said.
Japan, China's richest neighbor, has 200,000 engineering graduates
annually, and India, China's major developing neighbor, has only
80,000", Long added.
"The very nature of capital investment at the lowest cost
determines where the money goes," Long said.
According to official statistics, during the past 13 years, actual
overseas capital in China topped 400 billion US dollars, accounting
for 97 percent of the total since the country initiated its reform
and opening up policies in the late 1970s. Real investment and
contractual capital from abroad reached 46.44 billion US dollars
and 76.5 billion US dollars, respectively, for the first 10 months
of 2002, up 19.65 percent and 34.87 percent from the same period in
2001.
"Just as water always flows to the lowest point, China is bound to
be the first option for foreign capital investment", Long said.
(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2002)