BEIJING: China has rolled out a new round of market-opening measures, broadening foreign access to vocational training, higher education, financial derivatives and pharmaceutical sectors, as Beijing doubles down on its strategy to attract high-quality foreign investment amid a challenging global economic environment.
The measures are part of the action plan for stabilizing and improving foreign investment utilization, jointly issued on Monday by the Ministry of Commerce, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance.
China’s foreign direct investment has shown “strong resilience” despite recent fluctuations, with the country continuing to rank first among developing nations as a destination for global capital, Vice-Minister of Commerce Ling Ji told a news conference on Monday.
With all foreign investment restrictions in manufacturing now eliminated, Ling noted that China is shifting its focus to address lingering “post-entry” operational challenges, while planning to further open its services sector to create a more favorable business environment for multinational corporations. Building on previous pilot programs in value-added telecommunications, biotechnology and wholly foreign-owned hospitals, the new plan expands the scope of services opening to include vocational training institutions, vocational colleges, and high-level universities specializing in science, technology, engineering, agriculture and medicine.
In financial services, the plan allows more foreign institutions to use risk management tools including treasury bond futures, strengthening their ability to hedge against market volatility.
The plan also accelerates efforts to expand pilot zones for biotechnology and wholly foreign-owned hospitals.
It pushes for regulations on segmented drug production to facilitate cross-border manufacturing of biologics and chemical drugs.
Wang Ya, who heads the commerce ministry’s foreign investment management department, said that the services sector has become the primary driver of foreign direct investment in China, accounting for over 70 percent of the country’s total actual utilized foreign capital.
“Going forward, we will continue to increase policy support to actively attract foreign enterprises to establish regional headquarters, R&D centers and other functional institutions in China, so as to help expand the scale and improve the quality of China’s services sector,” Wang added. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
