China had approved the establishment of more than 610,000 overseas-funded companies by the end of July, with actual use of overseas investment totalling US$720 billion, said an official of the Ministry of Commerce on Sunday.

Overseas investment in China has kept expanding since the country began to reform and open up in the late 1970s and overseas-funded companies are playing an increasingly important role in boosting China's overall economic growth, said assistant minister Wang Chao at the 11th China International Fair for Investment and Trade that opened Saturday in Xiamen, a port city in the southeastern Fujian Province.

Wang said China's service industry attracted US$13.8 billion in the first half of this year, accounting for 43.2 percent of total overseas investment China actually received in this period.

"The amount represented a 58.2-percent rise over the same period of last year," he told a group of more than 200 delegates from investment promotion institutions of 48 countries and regions at Sunday's roundtable discussion.

Meanwhile, the central and western regions reported a 21.7 percent rise in the actual absorption of oversease investment in the first six months, higher by 9.5 percentage points than the national average, said Wang.

So far, more than 480 of the world's top 500 businesses have set up companies in China.

The commerce ministry released the year's China overseas investment report, published annually since 2003, on Sunday at the fair.