China is devoted to promoting stable and sound growth in foreign investment in 2017 under the direction of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, and the country will strive to regulate domestic companies' overseas investment, Zhou Liujun, head of the Department of Outward Investment and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), told a meeting in Beijing on Tuesday.
In the coming year, the government will boost Chinese firms' confidence in going global by offering guidelines and strengthening supervision to help them avoid risks, Zhou noted.
This year has been a vital period to comprehensively promote the "One Belt, One Road" initiative as the Chinese government actively improved policies involving promotion and facilitation for trade and investment, MOFCOM official Song Lihong told the same briefing.
Trade between China and countries and regions along the route of the initiative reached $848.9 billion in the first 11 months of 2016, accounting for 25.7 percent of the country's total trade, according to official data.
China's cooperation on infrastructure construction in the region gradually strengthened from January to November, mainly covering electrical engineering, housing, transportation and communications engineering, noted Zhou.
The ministry said that the establishment of free trade areas (FTA) is a significant component of the "Belt and Road" initiative, and China is stepping up efforts to build a high-level FTA network involving more of the world's economies.
As it holds a vital position in the "Belt and Road" initiative, Northwest China's Shaanxi Province has benefited largely from it.
Outbound investment of the province increased 20 percent year-on-year during the first 11 months to $664 million, said Zhao Runmin, director-general of the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Commerce.
Zhao noted that Shaanxi will continue to improve its opening-up as it steps up efforts to strengthen economic cooperation with projects along the initiative's route.
"But the lack of talented staff poses challenges to local firms when they want to go global," Zhao told the Global Times on Tuesday. "We will try hard to nurture companies' management abilities," he said.
