They are welcome to invest in high-tech industries such as information, electronics, space and aviation, optics, machinery and biomedicine, according to the new Catalogue for Guiding Foreign Investors to High-tech Products.

They have also been invited to inject capital into medical instruments, new materials, new and high-efficiency energy resources, environmental protection, earth and ocean sciences and applied nuclear energy technology, the ministries of commerce and science and technology said.

The catalogue they jointly issued specifies 917 products from these fields open to foreign capital.

The two ministries and other relevant government departments are now developing a policy to help foreign business people invest in some of the products.

The catalogue is designed to encourage the country's high-tech sector to adopt advanced technologies from abroad and stimulate innovation among domestic firms, according to the Department for High-tech Development and Commercialization at the Ministry of Science and Technology.

"This catalogue also aims to help domestic industrial sectors avoid importing relatively low-level foreign technologies," said the department's official Wang Qi'an.

The newly-issued catalogue provides foreign investors with information on specific high-tech products, making their investment more targeted, said Wang.

(China Daily July 18, 2003)