CHINA appeared to be exceeding expectations for gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment growth this year, a group of economists and Asia specialists said Friday.

　　Contrary to an anticipated slowing this year, China’s economic growth has picked up since the first quarter and is likely to be close to 8 percent this year, compared with 7.3 percent last year, according to Pieter Bottelier, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

　　Bottelier, a former China specialist at the World Bank, attributed the growth to higher-than-expected foreign direct investment, rapid export growth despite stagnating global trade, fiscal stimulus and consumer demand.

　　“On current trends, it is likely China will become the world’s largest manufacturing country in terms of gross output value in about a decade,” he said at a National Press Club forum on U.S.-East Asia economic relations in Washington.

　　Foreign direct investment in China last year rose nearly US$6 billion from the previous year to US$47 billion, even as global foreign direct investment dropped to less than half its 2000 level, according to a U.N. Conference on Trade and Development report released Wednesday.

　　China’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation estimates that foreign direct investment in the first eight months of this year reached US$34.4 billion, up 25.5 percent from the same period of last year, and will likely reach a record US$50 billion for the full year, according to the ChinaOnline news service.

　　Initial figures also suggest contracted-for foreign direct investment will also soar this year, according to Robert Kapp, president of the U.S.-China Business Council.

　　Kapp and other panelists cited the announcement last week that Japan’s car maker Nissan Motor Co. would invest US$1.3 billion in Chinese manufacturing as an example of continued strong growth.

　　China’s emergence as a regional powerhouse has caused some concern in Japan about the loss of its role as an economic leader in Asia as well as anxiety about the “hollowing out” of Japanese industries, said Edward Lincoln, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

　　But Lincoln said concern about losing manufacturing to China has been somewhat exaggerated, as most of Japan’s foreign direct investment in recent years has gone to manufacturing in the key U.S. and European markets.

　　(SD-Agencies)