(Adds details, background, vice-minister's article)
BEIJING, Aug 17 (Reuters) - China suffered its tenth straight monthly fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) in July. However, the country sees good news ahead on the export front.
FDI inflows fell 35.7 percent in July from a year earlier to $5.36 billion, much steeper than June's 6.8 percent drop, the Ministry of Commerce said on Monday.
Inflows have weakened in recent months in the wake of the global financial crisis, the first faltering in a surge that followed China's accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001.
In the first seven months FDI fell 20.3 percent from a year earlier to $48.3 billion.
But Yao Jian, a spokesman for the ministry, said China was doing better than many other countries in luring FDI and he remained confident that China would keep attracting investors.
Yao was also optimistic about China's export outlook.
"We think the fall in our exports will narrow in the second half, and there's even a possibility it will grow in some months due to the low base last year after the global financial crisis," Yao told a regular monthly news conference.
Exports fell 23.0 percent in July from a year earlier, and imports were down 14.9 percent, the government said last Tuesday.
However, after adjusting for the number of working days, exports rose 5.2 percent from June and imports rose 3.5 percent.
Zhong Shan, a vice commerce minister, said China would not relax its efforts to help domestic exporters.
But Beijing would also try to narrow the country's trade surplus by expanding imports of energy and resource products to build up state reserves, Zhong wrote in the official Seek Truth magazine.
At the same, China would encourage local firms to set up production in other countries to help reduce the balance of payments surplus, he added.
With global trade slumping, China is experiencing growing friction with its big trading partners, particularly India and the United States.
There were 60 anti-dumping cases targeting China in the first half, up 11 percent from a year earlier, Yao said.
He said Beijing would prefer negotiation instead of retaliation, which, if pursued, would also harm Chinese firms.
To better shield domestic companies from anti-dumping actions, China needed other countries to grant it market economy status, Yao said.
He criticised as inappropriate the European Union's decision to use Turkey -- which has a much higher standard of living than China -- as a comparator in its anti-dumping investigation against Chinese aluminium road wheels. [ID:nLE494703]
If the EU recognised China as a market economy, it would use China's actual production costs in probing such anti-dumping claims, not those of a third country like Turkey. (Reporting by Langi Chiang, Zhou Xin and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Ken Wills)