The volume of foreign capital used nationwide was $11.76 billion in March, a decline of 6.1 percent year-on-year, while the first-quarter volume was $29.48 billion, a decline of 2.8 percent, according to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce.

Despite emerging signs that foreign investment is shifting to high-end manufacturing and the service sector, the continuous decline in inbound foreign capital is still cause for concern and underscores the need to make institutional improvements to facilitate the inflow of foreign capital.

The "positive list" management model of local governments' different preferential policies that prevails in China has erected some "glass walls" to the entry of foreign investment in numerous fields.