With its "Belt and Road Initiative" gathering steam, China has been stepping up a global investment spree in search of fresh opportunities for the country's future growth.

According to Swiss bank UBS' estimates, China's outbound direct investment (ODI) in the "Belt and Road" regions will exceed $200 billion in the next three years, with the annual growth rate soaring to 30 percent between 2015 and 2018 - from 15 percent in the past seven years. It says China will play a big role as a regional economic patron over the next few years.

The Ministry of Commerce says that, in the first three quarters of this year, Chinese companies' ODI in countries and regions along the "Belt and Road" routes jumped by 66.2 percent to $12.03 billion, accounting for 15.3 percent of the nation's total non-financial outbound investments.

Singapore, Kazakhstan, Laos, Indonesia and Russia were among the most popular investment destinations.

China's winning the bid over Japan last month to build a $5.5-billion high-speed railway in Indonesia is just a glimpse of how the world's second-largest economy will continue to expand its investments overseas.

China's two high-speed railway projects in Laos and Thailand gained ground last month, with top government officials of the two countries indicating that construction work might start by yearend.

These mammoth engineering projects, together with the one in Indonesia, worth more than $20 billion, are scheduled to be completed within the next five years.

As the Chinese mainland cements itself as a global leader in the high-speed railway sector, the effects of the push have been felt not only in the "Belt and Road" regions, but also in the US and the UK, where China clinched a deal last month to help build a high-speed link from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and is set to bid for multi-billion-dollar high-speed railway projects linking London and northern UK cities, UBS Group AG analyst Robin Xu said.

The Asian giant's railway industry is reportedly engaged in infrastructure negotiations with 30 countries, with total investments in high-speed rail projects projected to reach $470 billion.

Last year alone, Chinese companies signed $24.7 billion worth of contracts for overseas rail projects.

While high-speed rail stands as a great showpiece of the Chinese overseas investment boom, the landmark deals have also been frequently seen in the real-estate, technology and financial sectors, noted UBS Group AG strategist Lu Wenjie.

In particular, with the country's outbound tourism growing by nearly 20 percent annually, its ODI could facilitate a win-win situation by upgrading transport infrastructure, hotels and resorts to potentially attract millions of Chinese tourists and create a huge number of local jobs, Lu said.

He believes that China's global investment spree could boost the nation's stale economy as the free flow of people and goods could make its economy less vulnerable to external uncertainties. And almost half of the expected $200 billion ODI in the "Belt and Road" regions over the next three years will come from private companies.

However, when it comes to how much such an investment boom could absorb the county's overcapacity, Lu said it remains to be seen.

"Eventually, it's domestic economic reform rather than overseas investment that could prove to be a way out for us to solve the problem of overcapacity," he added.

sophia@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 10/29/2015 page10)