国际英语新闻：Foreign, Chinese firms' tax burdens unified

"It's understandable that they need time to adapt to the changes, but China also has reason to adjust investment policies to support the economic-development mode," Wang said.

Premier Wen Jiabao has repeatedly confirmed that China welcomes foreign enterprises and will treat them as it does domestic companies.

Wang Zhile said China moving toward patiently listening to mutinational companies (MNCs) and it should continue to take advice from them and try to create a more open environment for them, because foreign enterprises are a significant growth engine for China's economy.

Since August, China's FDI growth has remained in the single digit, in contrast to double-digit rates as high as 30 percent in the first half of this year, raising concern about whether high-level growth is sustainable.

Hao Hongmei, a researcher at the foreign investment department of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, a division of the Ministry of Commerce, said China has outperformed others in absorbing FDI and there is no doubt that FDI will continue to grow in the coming years.

"But thanks to the global economic downturn and the nation's transforming economic-development mode, China's FDI growth will probably be moderate and might even decelerate somewhat," he said.

The Philippines-based SM, that nation's largest retailer, plans to invest more than $1 billion in China's second-tier cities in the next five years to establish super shopping malls. Bosch, Germany's leading industrial group, also said China will be given priority when it comes to investment overseas.

The Swedish construction equipment provider Volvo Group is planning to invest more than $100 million in emerging markets, with most of it going to China.

"The company's business in Asia has doubled this year, with China acting as the pillar contributor," said Olof Persson, president and chief executive of Volvo Construction Equipment.

China's economy has grown more than 9 percent in the past five quarters ending in September as the government stimulus paid off. The International Monetary Fund predicts China will expand by 9.6 percent in 2011, four times the pace of the United States and six times that of the euro area.

China outperformed Japan as the world's second-largest economy for the second straight quarter in the three months ending in September.

A report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in September shows that China continues to be the world's most attractive FDI destination.