Analysts said the spike in foreign investment may have been driven by excess global liquidity and expectations that the Chinese yuan currency will appreciate.

Announcing the year-on-year figure, commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian told a regular briefing that China attracted 9.7 billion dollars in foreign direct investment (FDI) last month.

FDI slowed sharply in August, rising just 1.4 percent year-on-year compared with 29.2 percent in July and 39.6 percent in June.

But in September it picked up again, increasing 6.1 percent year-on-year, while in October it rose 7.9 percent.

Yao said foreign companies pumped 91.7 billion dollars into China in the first 11 months of the year, up 17.73 percent over the same period last year.

"We expect full-year foreign direct investment to reach around 100 billion dollars," Yao said.

The data includes investment by overseas companies in industries such as manufacturing, real estate, services, and agriculture but excludes money put into banks and other financial institutions.

Yao said this year's increase had been mainly driven by growth in the services sector.

Foreign companies poured 41.1 billion dollars into China's services industry from January to November, up 29.3 percent from the same period last year, a ministry statement said.

Such strong growth has fanned concerns about speculative foreign cash inflows adding to inflationary pressures that have Beijing's policymakers worried.

Ren Xianfang, an economist with research firm IHS Global Insight in Beijing, said excess international liquidity and an anticipated yuan rise encouraged investors seeking higher returns in China amid weak growth elsewhere.

"Money has become very cheap and so will flood into emerging markets, including China," she said.

China has led heavy criticism from major world exporting countries of last month's decision by the Federal Reserve to pump 600 billion dollars into the US economy, over concerns of higher commodity prices and speculative cash inflows.

But Yao dismissed the worries, saying the FDI increase was "generally normal" but oversight over the cash flows would be "certainly enhanced".

China's consumer price index -- a key gauge of inflation -- rose 5.1 percent on year in November, the fastest increase in more than two years and well above Beijing's full-year target of three percent, as food costs continued to soar.

China's central bank announced in October the country's first interest rate hike in nearly three years, just one of many efforts to curb growth.

earlier related report
Goldman Sachs star to launch major Asian hedge fund: report
Hong Kong (AFP) Dec 16, 2010 - A star player at troubled US banking titan Goldman Sachs is set to leave his post and set up a Hong Kong-based hedge fund that could be one of the largest in Asia, a report said Thursday.

The Financial Times said Morgan Sze, outgoing head of Goldman Sachs' Principal Strategies trading desk, had begun raising money for what is expected to be the largest hedge fund launch since the financial crisis began.

It comes as Goldman Sachs is being forced to wind down the unit that Sze currently heads in response to US legislation framed following the crisis that bans large banks from trading with their own capital rather than clients'.

The Financial Times noted that at his peak, Sze had reportedly been one of the highest paid traders in the world, earning as much as double the pay of Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein.

The new hedge fund is to be called Azentus and is tentatively expected to start trading at the end of the first quarter of 2011.

Marketers for the fund expect it to start trading with between one billion and 1.5 billion dollars, the report said, citing people familiar with the launch.

Hedge funds are lightly regulated and open to limited numbers of investors and engage in a range of sophisticated and often high-risk investment practices such as short selling.

The new Hong Kong-based fund underlines a shift in the hedge fund industry away from its traditional centres in New York and London, the Financial Times noted.

Goldman Sachs has had a gruelling year, announcing in July that second-quarter profits slumped 82 percent following a massive US fraud settlement and the costs of a new British tax on bonuses.

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