China's Investment Landscape: Finding New Opportunities
Published: September 2017China’s foreign investment landscape has experienced pivotal changes this year. The Middle Kingdom can still be a challenging place to do business, but its economy has outperformed expectations. In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we examine how foreign investors can capitalize on China’s latest FDI reforms. First, we outline new industry liberalizations in both China’s FTZs and the country at large. We then consider when an FTZ makes sense as an investment location, and what businesses should consider when entering one. Finally, we give an overview of China’s latest pro-business reforms that streamline a wide range of administrative and regulatory measures.
No. of Pages: 16 pages
In this issue:
- The New Investment Catalogue and Negative List
- Investing in Free Trade Zones
- The Business Reform Agenda
China’s foreign investment landscape has experienced pivotal changes this year.
At the start of 2017, in the face of rising protectionist sentiment in the US and EU, Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed China’s commitment to international trade and globalization in a much publicized speech in Davos. Policymakers in China then supported this rhetoric with a number of investment-friendly reforms throughout the year.
China liberalized a number of industries previously restricted to foreign investment, introduced the country’s first nationwide negative list to guide foreign investment, nearly tripled its free trade zones (FTZs) from four to 11, and introduced a variety of administrative reforms to improve the ease of doing business.
The Middle Kingdom can still be a challenging place to do business. Foreign businesses and governments often lament allegedly unfair industrial policies, uneven market access for foreign investors, and an increasingly unwelcoming business environment. However, China continues to grow. Its economy has outperformed expectations, growing at 6.9 percent through the first half of the year, and with the latest batch of reforms, more industries are open to investment than ever before.
In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we examine how foreign investors can capitalize on China’s latest FDI reforms. First, we outline new industry liberalizations in both China’s FTZs and the country at large. We then consider when an FTZ makes sense as an investment location, and what businesses should consider when entering one. Finally, we give an overview of China’s latest pro-business reforms that streamline a wide range of administrative and regulatory measures.
China has experienced many changes during our 25 years of service in the country. In 2017, we are dedicated to helping strategic investors find new opportunities in the maturing economy, and its attendant reform environment.