When it comes to overseas acquisitions by Chinese companies, most people think of the mega deals involving large State-owned enterprises in sectors such as oil and steel.

However, sometimes the real action is not in those splashy headlines, but in the cold figures of provincial government bureaus.

Those figures show that the biggest growth in outbound investment is fueled by hundreds of medium-sized manufacturing companies, especially those in the industrial heartland of the Yangtze River Delta region.