China’s innovation drive continues with $1bn Skolkovo deal, but FDI drops off

China’s drive to establish a presence at the cutting edge of innovation in areas such as electric vehicles, financial technology and renewable energy  received a boost this week when Tus Holdings (formerly the Tsinghua University Science Park (TusPark) Development Center )unveiled plans to set up a $1bn joint venture fund dedicated to innovative start-ups at Russia’s Skolkovo Technopark near Moscow.
“The project will enable the creation of a multi-specialized channel for the development by numerous new high-tech Russian companies [of products and services] for the Chinese market together with Chinese partners,” the Skolkovo Foundation said in a press release. Georgy Zinovyev, China’s Charge d’affaires at the Russian Embassy in China describe it as “an efficient tool of encouraging scientific and technical cooperation.” Projects expected to receive financial and technical support from the fund are likely to be centred around  financial  technology, Big Data, cloud technologies, biotechnology and biomedicine, clean energy sources, new materials, smart production (including robotics) and data transmission.
SINGAPORE has overtaken the US as  the top destination for Chinese FDI according to a new report published by the EIU yesterday. The US has dropped back into second place followed by  Hong KongMalaysia and Australia. The report, which covers investment in the the automotive, consumer goods, energy, financial services, telecommunications and healthcare sectors, suggests that Singapore and Malaysia are increasingly attracting Chinese investment because of their strategic location within China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI), and their relatively low level of risk, with e-commerce giants Tencent and Alibaba among the major investors in Asia.
Non-financial overseas direct investment into BRI countries grew by 18.2% to $14.8bn in 2015 but dropped by 2% to US$14.5bn last year, according to China’s MInistry of Commerce, which also described 2017 as “a struggle”, with  Chinese overseas direct investment to BRI countries down 13.7 per cent in the nine months to September.
“The outlook for China’s overseas direct investment appears to have dimmed. After a bumper year for deal-making in 2016, flows from China slumped by over 40 per cent year-on-year in the first 10 months of 2017,” the report said.