Fivefold surge in Americans on Chinese firms' payrolls, US study shows
The number of Americans on Chinese company payrolls has surged more than fivefold over the past five years along with growing foreign direct investment by China in the United States, a study by two US-based organisations has found.
The number of Americans on Chinese company payrolls has surged more than fivefold over the past five years along with growing foreign direct investment by China in the United States, a study by two US-based organisations has found.
Observers said this underscored the growing interdependency between Beijing and Washington despite their strained bilateral relations.
The report, titled "New Neighbours: Chinese Investment in the United States by Congressional District", showed Chinese firms had invested US$46 billion in new establishments and acquisitions in the US since 2000.
Considering only full-time jobs, it said Chinese firms now provided more than 80,000 direct jobs in the US.
"While this is still modest compared with the total number of jobs provided by foreign firms, it is significant growth from less than 15,000 jobs five years ago," the report said. "Fears that Chinese acquirers could systematically move acquired assets and related jobs back to China have not materialised."
According to the report, as of the end of last year, there were 1,583 establishments by Chinese firms in the US, stretching across all regions of the country.
The benefits of Chinese capital were distributed nationwide, not just in high-income parts of the country, the report said.
The biggest recipients in terms of cumulative investment between 2000 and 2014 were districts in North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Virginia, and Texas.
While acquisitions mostly represented change in ownership, many Chinese takeovers generated local investment as the new owners saved firms from bankruptcy and provided new financing lines, the report said. In most cases, the acquisitions led to expansions, and examples of downsizing were rare.
Greenfield projects had already generated billions in local investment, the report stated, and investments in big manufacturing and service sector projects had accelerated significantly in the past 18 months.
It estimated the US could receive between US$100 billion and US$200 billion of investment from China by 2020, and between 200,000 and 400,000 full-time US jobs would be created.
Through its state-related and state-owned firms, China had invested a lot of funds in businesses in the US, including light manufacturing operations and research areas, said Philip Yang, director of the Taiwan Association of International Relations.
"This has not only created jobs for local Americans, but has also expanded Chinese influence in parts of the US," Yang said.
Analysts said that during election seasons in the US, American politicians could also encounter more lobbying from parties associated with Chinese business interests.
"We cannot rule out the possibility that China is using the expansion of the Chinese presence in the US to develop its lobbying power," Yang said.
But Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, director of the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Taiwan's Tamkang University, said it was too subjective to directly link the surge in the Chinese presence in the United States with an attempt by Beijing to increase its lobbying in Washington.
"Actually, there are more than 320 million people in the US, and the provision of 80,000 jobs is not that much," Huang said.
If China wanted to lobby, he said, it could do so indirectly, for example by promising to buy more planes from the US manufacturer Boeing.
