KUNMING - The 16th ASEAN Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs Conference opened Wednesday in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan province.

More than 600 overseas Chinese businesspeople from over 40 countries and regions, including Japan, Myanmar, Singapore and the United States, attended the event.

During the conference, five projects valued at a total 2.62 billion yuan ($409.2 million) are scheduled be signed, ranging from agriculture and culture, to cross-border business and logistics.

Since the conference was first held in 2003, it has attracted more than 3,000 enterprises and 5,000 overseas Chinese entrepreneurs, with actual investment totalling more than $5 billion, according to the Yunnan provincial government.

By the end of 2017, there were 1,084 overseas Chinese-funded enterprises in Yunnan, with fixed assets of 65 billion yuan ($10.2 billion).