China Releases 24 Measures to Draw More Foreign Investment

On August 13, 2023, the Chinese government released the Guidelines on Further Optimizing Business Environment and Attracting More Foreign Investment (the “Guidelines”), which provides 24 guiding measures in six aspects, stressing the need to improve the quality of utilizing foreign investment, ensure national treatment for foreign enterprises, strengthen the protection of foreign investment, improve investment and business facilitation, and increase fiscal and tax support.

The Guidelines clarifies that China will draw more foreign investment in biomedicine, advanced manufacturing, digital economy and other fields, and steadily expand the pilot regions for the opening up of value-added telecom services such as domestic Internet virtual private network services (where the ratio of foreign shares is topped at 50%) and information services (restricted to App stores). China will also accelerate the revision of the Government Procurement Law, improve the mechanism for the resolution of disputes in international investment and the system for administrative adjudication of patent infringement disputes, support cities like Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai and the Greater Bay Area to explore a convenient and secure management mechanism for cross-border data flows and establish a green channel for qualified foreign-invested enterprises to efficiently carry out security assessments for the export of important data and personal information, and promote the safe, orderly and free flow of data.