Influence of local Chines entrepreneurs grows
When Jin Fushe, an entrepreneur from China's east coast, entered the plastic sack business in Daqing, an old oil town near the Russian border, no one seemed interested in recording the event.
Mr Jin's company had no name recognition, the amount he invested was not huge and the plastic sacks used by Chinese farmers are not the sexiest of products.
In itself, Mr Jin's move was not remarkable. But multiplied a myriad times across China, the investments of private entrepreneurs are transforming the economy in a way that rivals the influence of the headline-grabbing foreign investors.
The new trend is particularly visible in the industrial rustbelt of China's northeast, an area combining three provinces - Heil-ongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning - with a total population of 107m and borders with Russia and North Korea. In 2003, Beijing identified the region as the target of its latest developmental campaign to "revitalise the north-east".
In Daqing, a city of 2.49m in Heilongjiang, there are 119,000 private enterprises and some 40 per cent of them are investors from other provinces, mainly those along China's booming east coast, officials say.
"Domestic investment from other provinces is extremely important. Private enterprises have brought investment, new markets, new management mechanisms and new technology," says Gai Ruyin, Daqing's mayor. "To be frank there has not been a great deal of foreign investment coming to Daqing. But foreign and domestic investment is equally welcome."
The mobility of private Chinese investment has gathered pace in the past five years, as Beijing has gradually cast aside its ideological prejudices against private ownership, culminating in a decision in late 2002 to allow entrepreneurs to join the hallowed central committee of the ruling Communist Party.
Now, as foreign companies bid for stakes in the many state-owned companies being put up for sale by provincial and city governments across China, they are more likely than ever to discover that their competition is a Chinese entrepreneur with less than 10 years of corporate experience.
In Daqing, for example, one of the largest investors is Xinxinlong Plastics, a private company run by a
36-year-old from Taizhou, a port city near Shanghai.
The company rented 20,000 sq m of factory space in Daqing in 2003 and has invested Rmb30m ($3.6m) of a planned Rmb110m to create a "plastics kingdom" that will produce everything from plastic cups to motorised bicycles.
"Our motorised bicycle production capacity is potentially 200,000 a year," says Xia Qingyue, general manager of Xinxinlong in Daqing. "All bicycles are sold to provinces in middle China, like Henan, Hebei, Hunan and Anhui. An electric motorised bicycle is sold for Rmb2,000."
Mr Xia says the things that attracted Xinxinlong to Daqing were the abundance of petrochemical raw materials used in the manufacture of plastics and government incentives, including concessionary land rental rates and tax treatment.
In addition, the electricity shortages in Taizhou had raised costs, but in Daqing there was more electricity than demand for it.
"We want to open the Russian market," Mr Xia adds. "Russia does not have big local plastic products factories. Next month, I will go to Vladivostok to see the investment environment and we will design a series of home appliances like a bottle for heating water."
Chinese entrepreneurs began arriving in Daqing in force about five years ago, but foreign investors have yet to make an obvious appearance. Being small, the Chinese investors are relatively nimble and do not face the cultural and legal dissonance between the overseas head office and the China operations that so often plague foreign investors.
The agility - and perhaps the fickle loyalty - of some domestic investors is exemplified by Mr Jin, one of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who have left the boomtown of Wenzhou, the cradle of China's experiments with private enterprise, to seek a fortune in inland provinces.
"Wenzhou businessmen go anywhere we can make money. If we make a good profit we stay. If we make a small profit we stay. If we break even we stay. But when we start to lose our capital, then we are off to the next place," says Mr Jin, who moved to Daqing after a brief sojourn in the far western region of Xinjiang.
Wenzhou businessmen tend to use family networks to finance their activities rather than bank financing, Mr Jin says. They often prefer to rent factory space, because ownership can turn into a millstone if the business starts to make a loss.
It is difficult to make a precise comparison of contributions from foreign direct investment and domestic private investment to China's economic expansion. Classification systems for private enterprises are poorly developed and provincial authorities rarely supply statistics on how much investment has come from domestic enterprises.
However, in the north-east at least, it appears that the money brought in by domestic investors is now not far off that invested by foreigners. Officials in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang, and Changchun, capital of Jilin, say that domestic investment from other provinces is now running about equal with inflows of FDI.
In spite of this trend, it is likely that the FDI will continue to grab the headlines. In Harbin earlier this year, Anheuser-Busch, the US brewer, and SABMiller, the South African brewery, fought for control of Harbin Brewery in the first hostile takeover battle since the 1949 revolution.
The battle and its $717m valuation was a perfect recipe for a media frenzy.
中国企业家开始叫板外国投资者
当来自中国东部沿海的企业家金福社(Jin Fushe，音译)进入接近中俄边境的老牌石油城市大庆的塑料袋行业时，似乎没人有兴趣记录这一事件。
金先生的公司不太出名，他投资的金额不大，而且中国农民使用的塑料袋也不是什么吸引眼球的产品。
金先生此举本身没什么不寻常之处。但在全中国遍地开花的民营企业家投资行动，正在改变中国经济的面貌，能对那些外国投资者的影响力构成威胁。那些外国投资者的行动屡见报端。
这个新趋势在中国东北这个工业衰退地带尤为明显。东北地区由黑龙江、吉林和辽宁三省组成，总人口为1.07亿，与俄罗斯和朝鲜接壤。2003年，中国政府将这一地区界定为其最新“振兴东北”的目标。
官员们表示，在黑龙江大庆这个249万人口的城市，有11.9万家私营企业，其中约40%是来自其它省份的投资者，其中大部分人来自中国繁荣的东部沿海地区。
大庆市市长盖如垠说道：“来自其它省份的国内投资极为重要。私营企业带来了投资、新的市场、新的管理机制和新技术。坦白地说，大庆的外国投资不多，但对外国和国内投资我们一样欢迎。”
随着中国政府逐渐把对私有权的意识形态偏见放在一边，最终于2002年年末作出决定，允许民营企业家加入中国共产党中地位崇高的中央委员会，中国的私人投资过去5年里越来越活跃。
现在，当外国公司竞购中国各省市政府拿出拍卖的许多国有企业股权时，他们比以往更有可能发现，其竞争对手是有着不足10年企业经验的中国创业家。
以大庆为例，当地最大的一个投资者是鑫鑫龙塑料模具有限公司(Xinxinlong Plastics)。这是一家由一位36岁的台州人经营的民营企业。台州是上海附近的一座港口城市。
2003年，鑫鑫龙公司在大庆租赁了2万平方米厂房，投资3000万元人民币(合360万美元)，以创建一个“塑料王国”，准备生产从塑料杯到电动自行车在内的各种产品。这一项目的计划投资额达1.1亿元人民币。
大庆鑫鑫龙总经理夏庆悦(Xia Qingyue，音译)说：“我们的电动自行车生产能力有望达到每年20万辆。所有自行车都销往中国内陆省份，比如河南、河北、湖南和安徽等。一台电动自行车售价2000元人民币。”
夏先生说，吸引鑫鑫龙来大庆投资的，是这里丰富的石化原料(用于塑料产品制造)，以及当地政府的激励措施，包括土地租金和税收方面的优惠。
此外，台州的电力短缺也抬高了成本，但大庆拥有超过需求的电力供应。
夏先生补充说：“我们想打开俄罗斯市场。俄罗斯国内没有大型塑料制品厂。下个月我将赴海参威考察投资环境，我们将设计一系列家用电器，比如加热水瓶。”
大约在5年前，中国企业家开始大规模来大庆投资，但外国投资者迄今还没有明显露面。由于规模小，中国的投资者相对较为灵活，不用面对文化和法律差异，而这种存在于海外总部与中国运营机构之间的差异经常困扰着外国投资者。
一些国内投资者很机敏（或者说有些不安分），金先生就是一个例证。他是离开新兴城市温州、前往内陆省份寻找财富的数万名民营企业家之一。温州是中国民营企业试验的摇篮。
金先生说：“哪里可以赚钱，温州商人就走到哪里。如果我们在哪里能赚大钱，我们就会留在那里；如果能赚小钱，我们也会留下；如果能持平，也留下；但当我们开始亏损本金时，我们就出发去下一个地方了。”来大庆之前，金先生曾在遥远的西部地区新疆短暂逗留。
金先生表示，温州商人往往利用家庭关系为他们的生意融资，而不是通过银行融资。他们经常情愿租用厂房，因为如果企业开始亏损，那么对厂房的所有权就会成为沉重的负担。
很难精确比较外国直接投资和国内私人投资对中国经济增长的贡献。民营企业的分类系统很不成熟，而省级政府很少提供统计数据，来表明到底有多少投资来自国内企业。
然而，至少在中国东北地区，国内投资人带来的资金现在似乎不比外商投资的少。黑龙江省会哈尔滨的官员以及吉林省会长春的官员表示，来自其它省份的国内投资现在大约与外国直接投资的资金流入相当。
虽然有这种趋势，但外国直接投资还是有可能继续成为标题新闻。今年早些时候，美国酿酒商安海斯-布希(Anheuser-Busch)以及南非酿酒商SABMiller争夺对哈啤(Harbin Brewery)的控制权，这是自1949年以来的首次恶意收购战。
这场争夺及其7.17亿美元的收购价成为媒体疯狂报导的绝佳题材。
