China said on Monday that foreign companies have open access to investment in its key infrastructure in a rebuff to earlier comments by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

At a recent event organized by German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Baerbock asserted that foreign companies cannot invest in China's infrastructure facilities such as airports, ports and power grids, remarks China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said are not consistent with the facts.

Danish company Maersk, one of the world's biggest shipping corporations, has invested in ports in major coastal cities in China, including Dalian, Shanghai and Qingdao, and obtained a 25-percent stake in a port project worth 4.3 billion yuan ($600 million) in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo in 2012, Zhao noted. 

Up until June 2020, a total of 266 foreign-invested telecom companies had been approved in China, according to a report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. 

Baerbock also alleged that "rich G77 members" like China and Saudi Arabia are pressuring other countries in order to "extract absolute benefits."

China is not a member of G77. As the largest developing country, China has always sided with developing countries and given its help to them within its power, unlike some countries who seek self-interests by pressuring developing countries, Zhao said.

Zhao also repudiated some German officials' warning that German enterprises should reduce their dependence on China, saying such "dependence" is in itself a false proposition. 

Cooperation has always been mutually beneficial, and dependence is reciprocal, he said, adding that in the past 40 years, China has been expanding opening-up and is dedicated to offering a law-based, market-oriented and internationalized business environment to foreign investors.

(Cover: A view of Ningbo Port, Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang Province, January 16, 2015. /CFP)