OREANDA-NEWS. March 22, 2012. The partnership also plans to build a 129-megawatt hydroelectric power station next to the surface mine, which will be in the Mirador Mine Area, according to a statement China Railway Construction released on Wednesday. 

When delivering his annual Government Work Report to the National People's Congress earlier this month, Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to boost China's outbound direct investment. For the first time, Wen identified which industries will be targets for that spending. 

"China will guide all sorts of companies to invest in the energy, raw materials, infrastructure, agriculture and service industries, through mergers and acquisitions," Wen said. 

According to the Ministry of Commerce, China's overseas direct investment in non-financial industries reached USD 4.4 billion in January, up 59.9 percent year-on-year. Those numbers were calculated by looking at 355 overseas companies in 87 countries and regions. The value of China's outbound direct investment rose by 1.8 percent to reach USD 60.1 billion in 2011. 

At the end of January, 811,000 Chinese were working in investment projects abroad. That number was down by 30,000 from the same period last year. 

As Chinese companies make more outbound direct investments, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission is calling on State-owned companies to tighten their supervision of overseas assets and has asked assets appraisal groups to conduct more evaluations of State-owned enterprises' overseas assets.