I guess that one of the main attractions of foreign investors to China is the 1.3 billion population. It represents a huge potential market and given the status of its economic development some years ago, it also represented a large and cheap labor force. In fact, the anticipated huge consumer market has been and still is slow to develop due to the inherently thrifty nature of the Chinese, and the cost of labor is no longer so cheap due to the enormous amount of manufacturing that has been placed in China—it has, indeed, been the factory of the world. China had attracted about $10 billion of FDI a month in 2012 and prior, but this is now seen to be declining ($7.2 billion in August 2014), according to some observers, due to a less friendly investment environment. There are suggestions that foreign firms are being given a hard time by the authorities and by changing regulations, in order to help local companies.
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