BizChina

The Chinese government will continue encouraging outbound investment while attracting foreign investment in 2010 for "stable and relatively fast" growth of the country's economy, a government official has said.

Outbound investment, or "go-global" strategy, should aim at making use of overseas resources, market and advanced technologies, so as to help facilitate development of China's domestic economy, Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in the speech posted on the commission's website Tuesday.

The remarks were made at a conference held in Beijing on foreign investment on Dec. 11, but was not released until Tuesday.

In the first three quarters of 2009, China saw its investment overseas at 32.87 billion U.S. dollars, up 0.5 percent year-on-year, according to the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

Are you scared of the Made in China label? So am I. So are most Chinese. One of the top concerns Chinese consumers have is product safety, according to the findings from 5,000 interviews in 15 cities that my firm, the China Market Research Group, recently conducted. Chinese fear safety problems that wouldn't cross Americans' minds when shopping--clothing doused in toxic dye, condoms lubricated with vegetable oil, watermelons injected with dirty water to make them heavier.

Quality control is a serious problem in China. You've heard the horror stories about Chinese exports--rotten drywall in Florida homes, lead in Mattel children's toys. Over the last several years, China's reputation as the factory for the world has taken a hit. It has gotten so bad that the Chinese government recently launched a global marketing campaign on CNN touting how the Made in China label benefits the world.

The situation is slowly improving, though. Not only has the outcry in America and Europe pushed the Chinese government to clamp down (and to execute the worst offenders), but Chinese consumers are demanding change, too. They're shopping at retailers like Wal-Mart where they expect better quality control than at mom-and-pop stores. They're buying brands like DuPont ( DD - news - people ) and American Dairy whose marketing programs emphasize their safe production processes. Most of the people we surveyed told us they were willing to spend 20% more for ingestible products they believed were safe. Even before the melamine dairy scandal, my wife, who is from Beijing, had me fly abroad to Korea or the U.S. every three months to buy baby food for my son.

General Motors may be struggling at home in the U.S., but business in China hit new records last year in an economy relatively unscathed by the global financial crisis.

Auto sales for GM and its joint venture partners in China climbed by 66.9% last year to a record 1.8 million vehicles, GM announced. Led by sales of its Buick, Chevrolet and Wuling models, the company boasted a 13.4% share of China's auto market, up by 1.3 percentage points from last year and also a record for the company.

China surpassed the U.S. to become the world's largest auto market last year.

GM also predicted better results for 2010. "Despite the sales records in 2009, it looks as if 2010 will be even stronger," GM China Group President Kevin Wale said in a statement. "The industry outlook is strong, and we expect more growth, albeit it on a somewhat slower pace." The company "has all of the tools in place to have another great year in China," Wale said.

Chinese companies is likely to raise more than 320 billion yuan (46.87 billion U.S. dollars) from initial public offerings this year on the domestic stock market, up from 185.6 billion yuan in 2009, Price waterwatch Coopers (PwC) said in a report released Monday.

China's IPO market would see 145 new listings in 2010, with 15 listings in Shanghai and the rest on the Shenzhen bourse's Small and Medium Enterprise board and ChiNext, the country's Nasdaq-style board established in October, according to the report.

Whole year IPOs in 2009 reached 97, up 26 percent from that in 2008, as the securities regulator resumed IPOs after a nine-month ban in June.

China became the world's second largest listing market in 2009,as a combined market value from both Shanghai and Shenzhen stood at 23.6 trillion yuan, said the report.

Financial service, infrastructures, industrial products, consumer goods and retail sectors will continue to be key driving forces to the country's IPO market in 2010, Frank Y.C. Lyn, PwC's China Markets Leader, was quoted in the report as saying.