America Attracts 20% of Foreign Capital as China Reverses Investment Playbook
The global investment game plan is getting rewritten. America now hoovers up 20% of all foreign direct investment flowing globally, while China’s outbound capital hit 10% of worldwide totals in H1 2025 — surpassing US overseas spending for the first time. Long-standing investment roles are blurring, as China sends capital overseas and the US works to lure it back home.
- Chinese greenfield (factories, data centers, and physical infrastructure) projects abroad likely hit record levels in 2025 and are projected to climb further in 2026, per Rhodium Group.
- By end-2024, US firms held $6.8T in overseas long-term investments versus China’s $1.7T (ex-Hong Kong), a gap that’s shrinking fast.
Follow the yuan: China’s $1T+ trade surplus is no longer flowing into Treasuries — it’s funding factories and infrastructure abroad. Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations says there’s a “pretty straight line” from China shifting away from FX reserves toward state banks to the outward expansion of Chinese firms. This pivot forces nations worldwide to navigate tangled economic relationships with both superpowers, weighing protectionist American policies against investments from authoritarian Beijing.