On October 19, the State Council released the Opinions on Implementing the Market Access Negative List System and announced to officially implement the system in 2018.

 

The Opinions points out that the market access negative list system is a series of systematic arrangement that the State Council lists the prohibited and restricted industries, fields and businesses in the territory of China and the governments at all levels take corresponding management measures. The market players can have equal access to the industries, fields and businesses by law that not are inscribed to the market access negative list. The Opinions puts forward the market access negative list includes the prohibited catalogues and restricted catalogues. The market players are not allowed to enter the prohibited catalogues and the administrative organs should not approve or rectify such projects or handle related procedures. For the restricted catalogues, the market players can submit an application and the administrative organ can make a decision of approval or not; or the market players can have access to such catalogues in line with the access conditions and modes defined by the government. The Opinions requires that the market access negative list shall be formulated and released by the State Council; any adjustment planned by the local government shall be submitted by the provincial government to the State Council for approval. The Opinions puts forward to pilot the negative list in some areas from December 1, 2015 to December 31, 2017 by the principle of pioneering implementation and gradual promotion and officially implement the negative list across the country since 2018. The Opinions puts forward the guarantee measures of implementing the negative list from six aspects such as the access mechanism, approval mechanism and supervision mechanism, and requires to establish corresponding investment mechanism, business registration system, and the foreign investment management mechanism that are compatible with the market access negative list system to create a market environment with fair trade and equal competition.

 

 

Source: translate from investguangzhou, October 20, 2015