The Chamber’s stance on President Xi’s statement to the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs Go back »

2017-07-19 | All chapters

The European Chamber welcomes President Xi’s acknowledgment during the meeting of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs on 17^th July, of the important contribution that foreign investment has made to China’s development, which includes helping to advance market-orientated reforms. It also welcomes the statement that foreign investment can make great contributions to China’s supply-side structural reforms and the China Manufacturing 2025 initiative. Foreign investors should therefore now be permitted to do so on a nondiscriminatory basis.

The Chamber also fully agrees with President Xi’s statement that the negative-list approach should be rolled out nationwide “as soon as possible”. The most constructive step towards achieving this aim would be the release of an ambitious timeline for implementation. In line with President Xi’s call for reform “to unify laws and regulations on domestic and foreign businesses and make new fundamental laws on foreign investment”, the European Chamber believes that the most pragmatic approach would be to replace China’s existing foreign investment regime with a regulatory framework that applies equally to both domestic and foreign enterprises, as soon as possible. 

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