Many experts say greenfield projects - those involving new construction -provide a smoother move into the US market than does a merger or acquisition.

But Brion Tingler, a North Carolina-based spokesman for China's Lenovo Group Ltd, said in an interview last year that the computer maker has found, since buying the PC business of International Business Machines Corp in 2005, that Chinese companies can acquire and manage big, complex foreign peers.

He stressed that Lenovo's success followed a learning process in which the company navigated the challenge of integrating the IBM operation into its own. For example, after their deal, the two companies took several years to resolve differences in their business cultures, including divergent views of budgets and targets.

"We have continued to acquire companies in the last few years and we focused on culture from the very start. This is really important," Tingler said.

"It's like a marriage: Bride and groom get really excited about the wedding but fail to communicate about how they are actually going to make this marriage work after the honeymoon," he said.

He said Lenovo's IBM experience is a model not only for Chinese companies, but for any company from one of the world's emerging markets.

Chinese FDI in the United States hit a record $6.5 billion in 2012, up 17 percent from the previous high of $5.5 billion in 2010, according to Rhodium Group, a New York firm that tracks Chinese investment abroad.

These included blockbusters like oil producer Sinopec Group's $2.5 billion stake in Devon Energy Corp and Dalian Wanda Group's $2.6 billion purchase of cinema operator AMC Entertainment Holdings as well as smaller deals including China Wanxiang's $420 million equity investment in startup GreatPoint Energy.

"My vision is that in three or four years, the reinvestment will give AMC an edge over competitors," Wanda founder and Chairman Wang Jianlin said in Los Angeles when the AMC deal was announced in September.

During his visit, Wang also said Wanda plans to invest $30 billion in cinemas, hotels and department stores outside China, with a third of that to be allocated to US companies.

Contact the writers at chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com and lijiabao@chinadaily.com.cn