China's new measures offer broader opportunities for foreign investment

BEIJING -- China considers it vital to attract and utilize foreign investment while advancing its economic development, and the guidelines the country unveiled lately aim at providing a more favorable business environment and broader market opportunities for foreign-invested companies, said an expert with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

In the guidelines outlined by the State Council in mid-August, 24 specific measures in six aspects have been put forward, which include guaranteeing national treatment for foreign-invested enterprises, increasing financial and tax support, and fostering a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized.

The guidelines came timeously, said Zhang Qi, head of the center's foreign economic relations research department.

The COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, and trade and investment protectionism have led to sluggish world economic recovery and cross-border investment.

In this context, introducing and implementing the guidelines will help further boost the confidence of multinational corporations in their long-term operations in China, said Zhang.

The measures will also help provide new impetus to the recovery of global cross-border investment and stabilization of the global industrial and supply chains as they come into play, said Zhang.

The expert pointed out that some of these measures would expand China's modern services industries so that multinational corporations could enter emerging sectors, such as value-added services in the telecommunications industry, and grasp growth opportunities in the country's digital economic development.

Some measures encourage foreign investment to participate in China's innovation drive, allow new foreign products, especially those in the healthcare sector, to enter the Chinese market faster, and explore facilitated security management mechanisms for cross-border data flows, said Zhang.

Meanwhile, multiple measures are devoted to strengthening the protection of foreign investment's legitimate rights and increasing support for foreign-invested companies to provide them with a more favorable business environment.

The guidelines fully demonstrate China's confidence and determination to high-standard opening up and to attract multinational companies to participate in the construction of Chinese modernization, said Zhang.