Matt Ming from Beijing, China via Wikimedia Commons
January 25, 2021
 | AAN Staff | Foreign Affairs | 5
  
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China has now overtaken the U.S. in one particularly troubling economic metric: new foreign direct investment.

The metric measures the amount of investment sent by foreign investors into a particular economy. While the overall size of foreign investment in the US is still overall larger than in China, the change in new foreign investment away from America may signal that foreign investors are not confident in a United States run by Joe Biden.

As The Wall Street Journal reports:

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s top destination for new foreign direct investment last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic amplifies an eastward shift in the center of gravity of the global economy…

China, long ranked No. 2, saw direct investments by foreign companies climb 4%, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said. Beijing used strict lockdowns to largely contain Covid-19 after the disease , and China’s gross domestic product grew even as most other major economies contracted last year.

The 2020 investment numbers underline China’s move toward the center of a global economy long dominated by the U.S.—a shift accelerated during the pandemic as China has cemented its position as the world’s factory floor and expanded its share of global trade…

Foreign investment in the U.S. peaked in 2016 at $472 billion, when foreign investment in China was $134 billion. Since then, investment in China has continued to rise, while in the U.S. it has fallen each year since 2017.