Half of the foreign direct investment in in China's property market has been poured into Beijing's new high-rise buildings, said an analyst from international property adviser Debenham Tie Leung (DTZ) said.

The overwhelming majority of foreign real estate investments have been concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai the latter of which claimed 43 percent of the foreign investment, said Nicholas Cho, director of DTZ's investment department.

About 7 percent of the investment went to smaller cities including Dalian and Harbin in northeast China, Wuhan in central China and Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

Cho said Beijing eclipsed Shanghai because the capital offered bigger deals. Morgan Stanley recently signed a deal in Beijing worth 50 million U.S. dollars and Merril Lynch has cooked up a property investment deal worth 30 million dollars in downtown Beijing.

In total, foreign investors acquired 4.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of property in China in the first quarter, a surge of 32 percent over the figure for entire 2005, according to DTZ's release.

The property advisor said due to Chinese government's regulation efforts foreign investment would flow into real estate development projects rather than property purchases in China in the future.

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