China ramps up efforts to optimize legislation of foreign investment

A staff of a Chinese exhibitor is introducing a robot to foreigners at the 2018 China Yiwu International Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment Expo. The expo was held in Yiwu, eastern China’s Zhejiang province on November 29, 2018, attracting a large number of enterprises from China, the US, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and Italy. (Photo: Gong Xianming / People’s Daily Online)

China is hastening efforts to optimize legislation related to foreign investment, in order to attract more overseas investment, better protect the legitimate rights and interests of involved investors, and provide them with the more favorable business environment. China’s top legislature will deliberate and vote on the updated draft of the foreign investment law on March 8 and March 15 respectively, Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), said on March 4. The deliberation on March 8 will be the third review on the draft by the national legislative body. Insiders believed that three readings in less than three months signify China’s resolution to hasten legislation of foreign investment, and the determination to continue opening up a policy to the world.

China will push forward with the pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list approach to managing foreign investment, Zhang elaborated on the updated law, adding that the case-by-case approval procedures will be abolished. Areas, where foreign investment is restricted, will be detailed in the negative list, while industries that are not on the list will be fully open, with domestic and foreign firms enjoying the same treatment, the spokesperson added. “The new legislation brings about fundamental changes to China’s management system for foreign investment,” he said, adding that it will make domestic investment environment more open, transparent and predictable as to provide a stronger legal guarantee for all-round opening up. The draft law also has clear positions on intellectual property rights protection, technology transfer and other agendas concerned by foreign investors, Zhang pointed out.

By replacing three existing laws on Chinese-foreign equity joint ventures, non-equity joint ventures, and wholly foreign-owned enterprises, the new law will serve as China’s basic law on foreign investment in the new era, said the spokesperson, adding that the decision is part of China’s efforts to innovate legal system of foreign investment. Compared with the previous three documents, the new law puts more emphasis on facilitating and protecting foreign investors, as well as ensuring equal treatment of companies both at home and abroad. China, in its report at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), pledged that all businesses registered in China will be treated equally. Investments from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan regions, which are managed with reference to foreign investments in practice will not be included in the Foreign Investment Law. They are distinctive in a way that they are not foreign investment, but are not entirely equivalent to domestic capital, said the spokesman. With the new legislation in place, there would be no change in how investments from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are treated, he underlined. Zhang further said that legal systems regarding investments from the three places will be continuously revised and improved on a basis of actual demands, so as to provide a more open and easy business environment for investors from the regions.

By Ji Peijuan

(People’s Daily)