People walk up a flight of stairs as a Chinese flag is displayed at a border crossing facility in the Sha Tou Jiao Port of Shenzhen, China, on Friday, May 18, 2018. Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

China's foreign mergers and acquisitions were widely seen to have slumped in 2017, but some indicators suggest those numbers may be larger than earlier thought and might even continue to grow this year, according to investment bank, Natixis. "[W]hen one looks into some of the microdata in M&A, ... there is no such thing as a sharp reduction in China's cross-border acquisitions in 2017, if anything, an increase," Natixis Asia Pacific Chief Economist, Alicia Garcia Herrero and Senior Economist, Jianwei Xu, wrote in a note. "Such divergence can be explained by the increasingly important role that overseas subsidiaries of Chinese corporates have played in acquiring assets abroad. Those activities are not captured in the official data or even in some of the private M&A data providers," they added. Chinese overseas investments rose from $170.2 billion in 2016 to $185.4 billion in 2017, according to data compiled by Natixis, based on numbers from think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. That's in contrast to the dip reflected in the official overseas investment figures from Beijing, which showed a decrease from $170.11 billion in 2016 to $120.8 billion in 2017.

Numbers on mergers and acquisitions put together by Natixis tell a similar story. While completed deals declined from $147.5 billion in 2016 to $135.7 billion in 2017, based on Mergermarket data, AEI's numbers showed that completed deals actually rose from $147.6 billion in 2016 to $167.8 billion in 2017. That goes against the general view that Chinese outbound takeovers slowed last year, attributed to Beijing tightening regulations from overseas investments to ensure more strategic deal-making. Greater caution from the U.S. towards Chinese investments, also played a part.