Original links are included though some may have expired.

The Numbers: FDI flows, mainland China to rest of world:

2000: $0.9 billion
2003: $1.8 billion
2006: $16.1 billion

What They Mean:

This year, Chinese financial services firms bought stakes in investment banks Bear Stearns, Barclay's and Blackstone Group. Last year, Anhui-based auto firm Chery, bought Britain's defunct MG brand. Two years ago, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation bid unsuccessfully for Unocal and appliance-maker Hai'er lost out to Whirlpool in a bid for Maytag, but Lenovo bought IBM's old personal-computer unit . Shenzhen's telecom giant Huawei hopes for a share of 3Com. Are these things curiosities? Or glimpses of a future arriving faster than most guessed?

FDI transactions like these, in general, remain mostly preserves of the wealthy world. Each year UNCTAD's annual investment report totals up FDI flows and multinational employment. This year's version, out last week, counts about 78,000 multinational businesses worldwide, up from about 60,000 at the turn of the century. About 55,000 of the multinationals are based in the United States, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Together these rich-world businesses accounted for $930 billion of the world's $1.3 trillion in foreign direct investment flows, or about 70 percent. Wealthy Asian economies -- Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore -- added another $70 billion.

But like Robinson Crusoe seeing the footprint on the beach, they suddenly have some company. India, Russia, Brazil, and China are well-publicized recipients of rich-world investment; but as the Chinese bids show, they are rapidly growing investors abroad as well. Chinese FDI flows in particular are up twenty-fold since 2000. About half of Chinese FDI is in natural resource industries, funneled through tax havens and then moving on to Africa, South America, and the Middle East. But larger China-based services and manufacturing multinationals have become lively participants in international mergers and cross-border investment. UNCTAD's 2006 figures now place China third in Asia as an FDI source, behind only Japan and Hong Kong. The splashy bids for western firms are probably early indicators of life in the 2010s.

Further Reading:

More on FDI:

1. Around the world -- Most FDI comes from rich countries, and goes to rich countries. Despite media reports on "outsourcing" to poorer countries, UNCTAD's report shows that of last year's $1.3 trillion in FDI flows, $860 billion went to rich countries and only $380 billion to China, India, Mexico, and all other lower-income countries combined. By country, the United States received the most FDI: $175 billion, or about 15 percent of the world's FDI flows. Britain was second at $135 billion, followed by France third at $82 billion, and then China at $69 billion. It is true, though, that investment in poor countries is rising fast. High metal and energy prices meant new FDI records for Africa and the Middle East. Southeast Asia also set a record at $51 billion; so did India at $17 billion, and Pakistan at $4.6 billion.

UNCTAD's look at FDI in 2006:
http://www.unctad.org/Templates/webflyer.asp?docid=9001
&intItemID=4361&lang=1&mode=highlights

2. In the United States -- In 2006, American businesses invested $217 billion in foreign plants, offices, and acquisitions, about 80 percent of it in rich countries. ($127 billion to Western Europe, $15 billion to Canada, $12 billion to Japan, $7 billion to Australia and New Zealand, $10 billion to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea, $5 billion to Bermuda, $3 billion to Israel.) Investments in China, India, and Mexico totaled $17 billion.

Meanwhile about $165 billion came into the United States, also mainly from Europe. (Above all from the United Kingdom: Britain's $282-billion FDI stake in the United States is the largest in anywhere in the world. ) Foreign-owned businesses now employ about 5 million Americans, up from 3 million in 1988 and now about one in every 23 private-sector workers. U.S.-based multinationals, employ 30 million people in total: 21 million in the United States, 9 million abroad. Since 1988, U.S.-based multinationals have added a net of 3.7 million domestic employees and 4.3 million employees abroad.

3. In China: Inflow to China dropped slightly, though, for the first time in a decade, but China's $69 billion continues to top the developing world. The large majority of this is Asian. Hong Kong is China's top investor, accounting for about $20 billion last year. Taiwan is probably second at around $10 billion, though much of this is murkily funneled through the Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands. Japan and Korea come next at $4.6 billion and $3.9 billion, followed by the United States, Singapore, and Germany.

BEA on FDI flows in and out of the United States (scroll to "Operations of Multinational Companies):
http://www.bea.gov/international/index.htm

And on the sales and employment roles of multinationals in and out of the United States:
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/
mnc/2007/mnc2005.htm

4. And a sign of the future -- Hai'er, an appliance-maker based in Qingdao, lost a bidding contest with Whirlpool for the Maytag brand in 2006. (Sad denouement: Whirlpool then closed Maytag's Iowa plant and moved it to Ohio.) Hai'er still runs a successful refrigerator plant in South Carolina, an air-conditioning venture in Italy, and plants in Southeast Asia, Russia, Nigeria, and Pakistan. Hai'er America:
http://www.haieramerica.com/en/aboutus/