China's direct investment in Ireland totals over $1b: Chinese ambassador

DUBLIN -- The cumulative direct investment from China in Ireland is over $1 billion, Chinese ambassador to Ireland He Xiangdong has said in an interview with The Irish Times, a daily newspaper in Ireland.

"Chinese investments in Ireland have been keeping increasing over the past few years," said He in the interview, which was posted on the website of the Chinese embassy in Ireland on Saturday, adding that "the trend is keeping going on."

The recent announcement by TikTok to invest 420 million euros (about $496 million) in establishing its European data center in Ireland is "a good example that the business environment in Ireland is very attractive to Chinese enterprises," he said.

TikTok is a popular video-sharing social networking service owned by the Chinese internet technology company ByteDance based in Beijing. Earlier this month, TikTok announced that it will set up its first European data center in Ireland, which will create hundreds of new jobs in the country upon its operation in early 2022.

IDA Ireland, a state agency responsible for attracting foreign direct investment into Ireland, hailed TikTok's decision as "good news" for Ireland.

In the interview, which was conducted a few days ago, the Chinese ambassador also said that the volume of the bilateral trade between China and Ireland "has been expanding thousands of times from only several million US dollars in 1979," a year when the two countries established the diplomatic ties.

"There are good relations and good cooperation between our two countries in the last 40 years," he said, adding that he is fully confident about the future of the relations between China and Ireland.