China's foreign economic cooperation continued to grow rapidly during the first half of this year, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Non-financial foreign direct investment reached 7.8 billion US dollars, up 21.1 percent year on year. Turnover of contract project with foreign countries stood at 16.46 billion dollars, up 28 percent, and newly signed contract value was 31.12 billion dollars, up 35 percent.

So far China has had more than 2,000 companies licensed for foreign contract projects, of which 46 were listed among world largest 225 contractors in 2005 and 12 of them were among the top 100, said Wu Xilin, director of the Department of Foreign Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce.