China\u2019s growing distrust of the West is showing in its investment playbook.<\/p>\n
Only 2.6% of China\u2019s total foreign direct investment announced in 2025 went to North America, according to data from the independent research provider Rhodium Group. This is significantly lower than 27% a decade ago.<\/p>\n
The data reflects all FDI transactions with a value of more than $5 million across all sectors. In 2025, the automotive sector lost steam, while investments in data centers, raw materials, and consumer goods took the top spots.<\/p>\n
Geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China are the reason for the decline, Danielle Goh, a senior research analyst with Rhodium Group\u2019s China Data Services team, told Rest of World.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has increased scrutiny and imposed export controls<\/a> on Chinese goods and services, especially in advanced technology sectors such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence. Chinese companies, which now view the U.S. as unpredictable and volatile, are choosing to fund projects in politically friendly or neutral countries instead.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s [a] growing risk that projects may not ultimately move forward, so Chinese companies have been reluctant to invest heavily,\u201d Goh said.<\/p>\n In the last year, Chinese companies faced at least two notable setbacks related to tech manufacturing in the U.S.<\/p>\n In October, Hefei-based battery maker Gotion<\/a> abandoned its plans to build a $2.4 billion plant in Michigan after years of legal and political pushback to its Chinese ownership. In January, U.S.-based HieFo Corporation was forced to divest the semiconductor manufacturing assets it acquired in 2024 because one of its co-founders<\/a> was a Chinese citizen.<\/p>\n Six months ago, China-linked tech firm Suirui was ordered to divest<\/a> its ownership of audiovisual equipment firm Jupiter Systems over the \u201cpotential compromise of Jupiter\u2019s products used in military and critical infrastructure environments.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the long-drawn TikTok saga<\/a>, where Chinese behemoth ByteDance had to give up control in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n North America, Europe, and Oceania together attracted less than 20% of total FDI announced by China, down from 70% in 2016. The $100 billion greenfield investment \u2014 where a parent company builds a new venture from scratch in a foreign country \u2014 by Chinese firms in 2025 largely went toward diversifying their materials and manufacturing supply chains in other regions, data shows.<\/p>\n Asia came out on top with around $40 billion of new transactions in 2025, \u201cdriven by a mix of manufacturing investments, data centers, and raw materials mining and processing,\u201d Rhodium Group stated in its February report.<\/p>\n Investment in the Middle East and North Africa has been driven primarily by large-scale manufacturing and clean energy projects, and in sub-Saharan Africa by major commitments in energy and materials processing industries, Goh said.\u00a0Amid Trump\u2019s back-and-forth on policy, China\u2019s Latin America investments also posed as promising nearshoring locations<\/a> to serve the U.S. while circumventing high tariffs and other trade barriers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s growing distrust of the West is showing in its investment playbook. Only 2.6% of China\u2019s total foreign…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-276309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}