More and more Chinese businessmen are launching and expanding their businesses in Southeast Asian countries, counterbalancing previous capital flows in an overwhelmingly single opposite direction, officials and businessmen said at an ongoing exposition.

Mochtar Riady, chairman of Malaysia's renowned Lippo Group, said Chinese businesses have accumulated an abundance of capital in the economic boom over the past 30 years, leading to a strong desire to invest overseas, while some member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) wanted investment, especially in infrastructure projects.

The ASEAN would be "the main destination of China's growing overseas investment in future", the Chinese-Indonesian billionaire said at the China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, which is due to close Wednesday.

ASEAN member states have invested a total of 41.9 billion US dollars in China since the country began it reform and open-up drive in late 1978, according to statistics from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

With China's fast development, Chinese investment in ASEAN countries increased rapidly in recent years. In a single move at the exposition, China's Guangxi State Farms Group alone inked 42 investment projects with ASEAN enterprises, involving a total value of 19 billion yuan (2.5 billion US dollars).

So far more than 1,000 Chinese companies have made investment in ASEAN member countries, mainly in the sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, mining, tourism, electricity and infrastructure construction.

In the first two days of the China-ASEAN Expo which opened on Sunday, businesses from the two sides reached agreements on 92 projects. Under the pacts, Chinese companies will invest 1.19 billion US dollars in 37 projects in ASEAN countries, while ASEAN businesses will put 2.81 billion US dollars in the other 55 projects in China.

"Capital flow in both directions, rather than the previous single-direction movement, has emerged as a new trend within the China-ASEAN cooperation," said Zhang Jian, a professor of China-ASEAN study at Guangxi Normal University.

China and ASEAN countries have been pushing hard for the birth of the world's most populous free trade area in the region targeted for 2010.

Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan has called on the two sides to expand investment in both directions within the framework of regional cooperation.

China and the ASEAN are in talks over easier access for investors to each other's market, and an agreement is expected as early as next year, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce revealed.

(Xinhua News Agency October 31, 2007)