China’s rising labor costs and a deteriorating regulatory environment are prompting almost a quarter of European Union companies to consider shifting investments to other countries, a survey showed.

 

Twenty-two percent of 557 respondents said they may move investment to developing economies including those in Southeast Asia and South America, where doing business is easier, according to a confidence survey conducted in February by the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants and released today in Beijing.

 

The views present additional challenges to leaders of the world’s second-largest economy trying to sustain growth that may slow to a 13-year low this year and is further threatened by the prospect of Greece leaving the euro. Europe’s debt crisis is damping exports while Premier Wen Jiabao’s extended curbs on theproperty market have restricted domestic demand.