On May 8, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange released preliminary data of the balance of international payments for the first quarter in 2020. Wang Chunying, spokesman and chief economist of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said that although China's balance of international payments was affected by the pandemic in the first quarter, it still remained within a balanced zone basically. There has been a continuing net inflow of foreign direct investment in spite of a small current-account deficit.
Specifically, the first is the maintenance of a surplus in goods trade; the second is the narrowing of the deficit in services trade; and the third is a continuing net inflow of foreign direct investment.
In the first quarter of 2020, the net inflow of direct investment was $14.9 billion, and mainly the net inflow of direct investment to China was$33.6 billion, reflecting the long-term willingness of foreign investors to invest in China; the net outflow of China's outward direct investment was $18.7 billion, indicating that enterprises' outward direct investment was stable and orderly.
