China and Germany are sharing high stake in auto investments. German investments into China's auto industry remained strong in the past five years despite global economic volatility. Yet the majority of players in the game are big auto brands. How can smaller auto companies in both countries get involved for a piece of the action? A commerce ministry official weighs in on the topic.

LIU DIANXUN DIRECTOR GENERAL INVESTMENT PROMOTION AGENCY, MINISTRY OF COMMERCE OF CHINA "We have been building a China-Germany auto investment data base for the past two years. We collect data from the open market, covering intellectual property, commerce and investments. According to the data, German companies have invested in 250 auto projects worth 11.2 billion yuan in China in the past five years. More than half of the investments went to the R&D of auto parts. Meanwhile, auto giants like Volkswagen, Bosch, Daimler and continental have been investing in China's auto startups, developing auto connectivity networks.

Now, we hope to build platforms to help expand the collaboration to cover smaller companies in both China and Germany, providing professional financial, business and legal consulting services, to reduce the costs of bilateral investments, bring down the barrier of information and mitigate risks in trade.

Overall, we are building more than 10 such platforms for cross border investments between China and a host of other countries in many areas, such as China-Germany auto platform, China-Germany security and defense platform, China-US culture and entertainment platform, China-Netherlands agricultural platform, China-Norway ecological protection platform, China-Japan industrial collaboration and more."