Trade and FDI Factoids

We try to provide an up to date summary of key facts for businesses engaged in M&A and VC investment between China, the UK and the EU. Good reference points we use are the “Statistics on UK trade with China” Briefing Paper from 14 July 2020, the China Britain Business Council “China Talking Points” 12 August 2020 and the Mercator Institute for China Studies‘ “Chinese FDI in Europe: 2019 Update” from 8 April 2020, among others.

UK-China trade hit a “record breaking” £100 BN in 2019. (From British Consulate General Shanghai)
Global M&A transactions by Chinese companies in 2019 and China’s outbound FDI in 2019 continued their fall from “the 2016 spike”. For both M&A and FDI, we are broadly back to where we were in 2014 and 2016 looks like a postcard from happier times.
Chinese FDI in the EU (comprising roughly 55 greenfield developments and 95% M&A) fell to a five-year low of €11.7 BN.
It’s not lead by Chinese State-owned Enterprises (SOEs): Chinese FDI in the EU is driven 89% by private enterprises and 11% by SOEs.
The UK’s economic relationship with China supports between 114,000 and 129,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the UK, according to the “UK Jobs Dependent on Links To China” report from Cambridge Econometrics.
UK exports to China were worth £30.7 BN in 2019 (The UK exported £25.8 BN worth of goods direct to China in 2019)
The UK imported £49.0 BN worth of goods and services in 2019.
The UK had a surplus of £3.5 BN on trade in services with China in 2019, exporting a record high of £5.5 BN of services and importing £2.1 BN.
UK imports from China and UK exports to China were at record levels in 2019.
After the US, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Germany, India and the Netherlands, the UK is China’s ninth largest export destination.
The City of London is the largest centre for renminbi trading outside Greater China; it is also playing an important role in funding China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
There were 883,000 inbound visits to the UK from China in 2019. That’s a record high, up slightly on 2018, according to Visit Britain.
Almost 120,000 students from China (mostly, but not all, University students) were in the UK in 2019. That’s up 20% since 2018. The next largest single nationality was from India at just 38,000, according to the UK’s Home Office.