Open the gate wider but raise the bar too

China needs more high-end foreign investors with advanced skills, expert says

A British expert on Chinese international relations says foreign direct investment into the country since it started opening up in the 1980s has failed to play as significant a part as the Chinese government had hoped in the upgrading of its domestic industries.

Sean Breslin, director of the Centre for the Study of Globalization and Regionalization at the University of Warwick's department of politics and international studies, says as the Chinese economy continues its structural shift to more consumption-led growth, foreign investment into the country could have allowed a lot more local skills and technology transfer than it has.