China relaxes foreign investment restrictions

Presented by Premier Li Qiang on Monday, an executive meeting of the State Council examined and authorized five nuclear power projects in addition to four papers on policy measures to encourage the high-quality development of innovative small and medium-sized companies (SMEs).

Among the accepted materials was the 2024 edition of a list of special administrative procedures meant to grant access to foreign investment.

While fast opening industries including telecommunication, education, and health care services, the negative list indicates China would loosen limits on foreign investment further by totally eliminating entrance barriers in the manufacturing sector.

A set of rules on advancing the high-quality development of services trade through high-level opening up was another paper accepted during the conference.

The conference underlined that increasing high-level opening and promoting new foreign trade drivers depend on fastening the growth of services trade.

The conference advises efforts to support creative development in important sectors of trade including products trade and services trade as well as their integration.

It also underlined the need of initiatives to assist the worldwide growth of professional services like finance, consulting, design and certification as well as to generate new services trade drivers.

The conference covered policies with an eye on enhancing policy coordination in areas of taxation, finance, research and technology, industry and human resources, to support creative SMEs using specialized, advanced technologies to generate fresh, distinctive products.

The conference also calls for efforts to make those SMEs more digitalized and environmentally friendly as well as intelligent, thereby improving their fundamental competitiveness.

Noting that safety is the lifeline of nuclear power development, the conference underlined the need of strengthening safety rules to guarantee the highest safety of nuclear power and support the long-term healthy growth of the sector.

Shayne Heffernan