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Restrictions on Foreign Investment Admission in Mining and Manufacturing Sectors will be Greatly Relaxed

“China will significantly reduce restrictions on foreign investment admission in the service, manufacturing and mining sectors by amending the Catalog of Industries for Guiding Foreign Investment and related policies and regulations.” Wang Shouwen, Vice Minister of Department of Commerce has recently disclosed in a briefing held by the State Council Information Office on policies of further opening up and leveraging foreign capital.

According to Wang, on December 28 of last year, the Standing Committee of the State Council of the People's Republic of China adopted the Notice on Several Measures for Further Opening-up and the Active Use of Foreign Investment (hereinafter referred to as the Notice), which mainly included further opening up, further creating a level playing field, and further attracting foreign investment.

In the aspect of further opening up, the Notice stated that policies and measures for the “Made in China 2025” strategy shall be equally applicable to domestic and foreign-funded enterprises to encourage foreign investment in high-end manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, green manufacturing and upgrading of traditional industries. They shall support foreign investment’s involvement in infrastructure construction by means of franchising in accordance with laws and regulations, and shall also apply to relevant support policies. They shall support the establishment of foreign-funded R&D centers, to facilitate their cooperation with domestic enterprises and research institutions.

In order to further create a level playing field, the Notice stressed that all localities and departments shall ensure consistency during the implementation of policies and regulations; not increase restrictions on foreign-funded enterprises without authorization; promote fair participation of domestic and foreign enterprises in China’s standardization work, participate in government procurement bidding and treat production of foreign-invested enterprises in China unbiasedly in accordance with laws and regulations; strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights of foreign-invested enterprises, and enhance the construction of intellectual property foreign cooperation mechanism, etc.

To further put efforts on attracting foreign investment, the Notice proposed to support the central and western regions and the northeastern region to undertake industrial transfer, promote the two-way flow of funds, improve the efficiency of the use of funds to upgrade foreign-invested enterprises’ overseas financing capability and deepen foreign investment management system reform, etc.