Revision of China’s foreign investment laws likely to conclude in 2015

BEIJING - In an interview with the China Daily, Assistant Minister of Commerce, Wang Shouwen, has  referred to future revisions of China’s foreign investment laws as a “key project” that will “probably be completed” within the country’s current Five-Year Plan (in other words, before the end of 2015). While it still remains unclear what the final version of the law will be like post-revisions, Wang emphasised that the essential idea is that it “will shift from the regulation of enterprises to the supervision of investors and their investment behaviour.”

The revised foreign investments will apparently also contain definitions of “investor” and “investment conduct” that exclude issues falling within the scope of China’s Company Law, which China adopted in 1993 to regulate the organisation and operation of companies.

Foreign investment law revisions will likely serve as an expansion of the registration-oriented approach adopted in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) to foreign companies across the country, which Wang says “will help build a unified, open, competitive and orderly market.” www.webershandwick.cn (ATI).