SelectUSA summit to greet largest group from China

Vinai Thummalapally (left), executive director of SelectUSA and Stefan Selig, US under-secretary of commerce for international trade, talk to reporters about the 2016 SelectUSA Investment Summit in a briefing at the Washington Foreign Press Center on Wednesday. [Photo by Chen Weihua/China Daily]

Chinese investors continue to show strong interest in the United States with the largest delegation to next week's 2016 SelectUSA Investment Summit in Washington.

The 150-strong group from the Chinese mainland will be led by US Ambassador to China Max Baucus. The vast majority will be attending the summit for the first time, according to Vinai Thummalapally, executive director of SelectUSA, a federal government initiative to attract foreign direct investment into the US.

In addition, there will be a 20-strong delegation from Hong Kong.

The annual summit, first launched in 2013, will be held at the Washington Hilton on June 19-21, with nearly 2,400 participants from 70 markets and the US. Thummalapally on Wednesday described this year's meeting as "oversubscribed".

US President Barack Obama will deliver a keynote speech on Monday, while Secretary of State John Kerry and five other cabinet secretaries will also address the gathering. Some 50 government and business leaders will speak at various sessions throughout the summit, whose theme this year is "The Innovation Advantage".

Stefan Selig, under-secretary of commerce for international trade, dismissed the notion that a slowing Chinese economy is dampening the enthusiasm of Chinese investors.

"We would expect to see robust and strong Chinese investment to continue despite macroeconomic trends," he said on Wednesday. He noted that the growth percentage of the Chinese economy is misleading because the economy is getting so much bigger, meaning the aggregate economic value of the growth has continued to grow.

He said that Chinese officials voiced concerns over the CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) reviews of Chinese FDI at the eighth round of China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing early this month.

Selig emphasized that the reviews focus exclusively on national security concerns and not broad economic or policy interests, noting that only a very small percentage of foreign and Chinese investments are reviewed by CFIUS.