Catalog updated to attract investment

China released the 2022 catalog of industries for encouraging foreign investment on Oct 28, a move widely seen as part of intensified efforts to attract more foreign investment and expand high-standard opening-up.

Analysts said the revised catalog will help boost foreign investment in key industries like advanced manufacturing, high-tech, modern services, and environmental protection. It will also help facilitate a greater inflow of foreign capital into the country's central and western regions.

That will reinforce China's position in global industrial and supply chains and eventually inject more stability into the global economy, they said.

To take effect on Jan 1, the freshly unveiled catalog has 1,474 items, among which 239 are new and 167 are modified from that in the previous catalog released in 2020, according to a statement from the National Development and Reform Commission.

"The items applicable on the national level continue to focus on encouraging foreign investment in the manufacturing sector to enhance industrial and supply chains," said an NDRC official in the statement.

"The modifications of the national items mainly target promoting the integration of services and manufacturing sectors," the official said, adding items for central and western regions are designed in accordance with specific labor and resource conditions of different places.

For instance, new or revised national items in the catalog cover sectors including aviation equipment manufacturing, key industrial components used in autonomous driving, and high-performance raw materials.

They also cover advanced integration technologies and services for low-carbon environmental protection, energy and water conservation, as well as recycling of decommissioned wind turbine blades and photovoltaic module waste.

Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, said the revised catalog has adapted well to China's current external and internal conditions to better attract foreign investment.

"As the global economy has seen major changes in supply and demand dynamics and industrial structures since 2020, countries around the world are competing to attract foreign investors, although with differentiated focuses on specific areas," Zhou said.

"China is expected to better attract and promote foreign investment under the principle of reinforcing coordination between foreign investment and the development of China's industrial and supply chains," he said, adding that this will further allow for the sharing of China's development opportunities with foreign investors and the rest of the world.

Liu Ying, a researcher at Renmin University of China's Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, said the country's accelerated moves to expand opening-up, as reflected by the revision of the catalog, will intensify its position as a key player within global networks of industrial and supply systems.

Against the backdrop of the struggling global economy and industrial and supply chain reconstruction, China's further opening-up will help to build more open, stable, and elastic global industrial and supply chains while contributing to new worldwide growth momentum, Liu said.

The catalog was jointly released by the NDRC and the Ministry of Commerce.