As someone who has been doing inward foreign direct investment in China for seven years now, I am constantly harassed by foreign colleagues who ask "When am I going to start seeing some referral work from you?" The answer is always the same, which is essentially that they need to be patient and wait until Chinese companies start making investments abroad.

This has started to happen, albeit in a very limited fashion. Another deal was announced today, as Changhong, a huge Chinese television manufacturer, bought into a large Korean plasma display firm. The deal is slightly more complicated than that, involving a joint venture in China and a Netherlands holding company, but you don’t want to hear about that, right? (For all those juicy details, read this.)

Anyway, this is a very interesting and exciting trend, but it does not mean that Chinese companies are going to be buying up assets left and right in all the major economies in the world. All the foreign law firms that have visited here in the past few months, all of which are here to snatch up outward investment work into their jurisdictions, may have to wait some time before the volume increases enough to where they see some real action.

We are not yet at a point comparable to Japanese investment in the 1980s in places like the U.S. and other countries. However, things are definitely moving in a good direction for outward investment fans. Everybody, just relax and be patient.