BEYOND HOUSING
The "fear of China" is felt well beyond the field of real estate. Driven by rapid economic growth, China in recent years has become a significant source of outbound investment and its companies are now making more and more acquisitions abroad.
However, despite their contribution to local employment, just like what the offshore Chinese property buyers have done, these companies sometimes find themselves facing strong misgivings in the West.
"The expansion of China's outbound foreign direct investment is often seen as a threat. A 'fear of China' is prevalent in the West," said Jiang Shixue, a professor and deputy director of the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Taking the European Union (EU) for example, Jiang said that "some Chinese investment projects have been blocked because they might allegedly give China a 'strategic foothold'."
Actually, Chinese outbound investment benefits both sides, Jiang noted.
For the EU, Chinese capital plays a positive role in a number of ways, including making up for the shortfall in some European countries' capital and investment needs, promoting the development of productivity in the host country and helping European firms to increase their market share in the world, he said.
Such effects are also quite obvious in the United States, where Chinese investment in acquisitions, new operations and expansions is set to reach 30 billion U.S. dollars this year, following a record high of over 15 billion dollars in 2015.
According to a recent study, Chinese investment in U.S. businesses is expected to reach 200 billion dollars by the end of this decade.
A WIN-WIN GAME
Thanks to Chinese investors, more local jobs have been sustained and created in the United States, and many dying U.S. enterprises have been reborn, experts and economists said.
For example, Greenfield Industries in South Carolina, which held a leadership role in the cutting tools industry, was acquired for 20 million dollars by China-based TDC Cutting Tools in 2009, when the U.S. company was dying and had only 116 employees.
At first, "we were concerned, listening to different things on TV about Chinese how they were trying to buy everything. We were all concerned that they would bring their group of people and exclude us from what was going on, but it hasn't happened," employee Sherrie Carter recalled.
"It's like a family atmosphere and it has just been amazing," Carter added.
Now, the Greenfield Industries has been brought back to life and has at least 350 employees on its payroll.
The Greenfield Industries is typical of a spate of success stories of Chinese investment in the United States. Statistics released by China's Ministry of Commerce shows that Chinese investments now support about 80,000 full-time U.S.jobs, a five-fold increase in the past five years.
And creating jobs and helping dying U.S. enterprises survive are not the only boons brought by the takeovers.
As economists have pointed out, the tie-up of abundant Chinese funds and distribution channels with advanced U.S. technology and management expertise has also sharpened the competitiveness of the merged groups, generating an effect of one plus one being bigger than two.
Wan Long, chairman of Shuanghui, China's largest pork producer that purchased its U.S. counterpart Smithfield Foods in 2013, has said the acquisition enabled Smithfield to access the huge Chinese market through Shuanghui's distribution network while Shuanghui gained access to high-quality, competitively-priced and safe U.S. products, as well as Smithfield's best practices and operational expertise.
"The combination creates a company with an unmatched set of assets, products and geographic reach," Wan added.
