Since first promulgated in 1995, the Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries (the Catalogue) embraces “refreshment” again after six reversions.  

 

In order to implement the deployment of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on opening up further, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Ministry of Commerce, together with related departments, amended the Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries 2015 and formed the revised draft. Now it is released to the public for advice, according to the news on the website of the NDRC. The Catalogue has reduced the items with requirements on share proportion and restricted items and prohibited items, totaling 93 items, to 62 items, and integrated such items into the foreign investment access negative list.

 

Following the guidance of the opening up and development concepts, this amendment of the Catalogue will further promote the opening up level and improve the policy transparency. Such changes will be conducive to structuring a more complete business environment, giving a better play to the active role of the foreign investment in the economic development, industrial transformation, and reform innovation. The amendment shows four characteristics and changes as follows:

 

I. Continuously opening wider to the outside world. On the basis of the increased opening up last year, the 93 restrictive measures in the Catalogue 2015 (including 19 items with share proportion requirements in the encouraged foreign investment industries, 38 items in the restricted foreign investment industries and 36 items in the prohibited foreign investment industries) have been reduced to 62 items. The service industry mainly opens the highway passenger transport, tally for foreign vessels, credit investigation and rating services; the manufacturing industry mainly opens the access restriction on production and manufacturing of the railway transport equipment, automobile electronics and new energy automobile battery, motorbike, edible oil, corn deep-processing, and fuel ethyl alcohol; the mining industry mainly opens the foreign investment access restrictions in the fields of unconventional oil and gas, precious metals and lithium ore etc.

 

II. Reforming the structural arrangement of the Catalogue. Based on the No. 22 announcement of the NDRC and the Ministry of Commerce this year, the revised Catalogue integrated items with share proportion requirements in the encouraged industries and items in restricted industries and prohibited industries into the special management measures for the access of foreign investment (foreign investment access negative list), and clarifies the restrictive measures.

 

III. For the 11 measures in the restricted industries, including the construction and operation of large-scale them parks, conventional coal-fired power of condensing steam plants whose unit installed capacity is less than 300,000kW, within the small power grid, coal-fired power of condensing-extracted steam plants with dual use unit cogeneration whose unit capacity is 100,000kW within the small power grid, processing of traditional Chinese medicines that have been listed as the Regulations on Conservation and Management of Wild Chinese Medicinal Material Resources and Rare and Endangered Plants in China, ivory carving, tiger-hone processing, construction and management of conventional coal-fired power of condensing steam plants whose unit capacity is not more than 300,000kW, within the large power grid, and the coal-fired power of condensing-extraction steam plants with dual use unit cogeneration with unit capacity of not more than 200,000KW, institution of compulsory education and special education, like military, policeman, politics and party school, construction of golf course and villa, projects that endanger the safety and performance of military facilities, gambling industry (including gambling turf and eroticism, will be managed by the principle of equal treatment for domestic and foreign investment. And the revised Catalogue will not list one by one any longer.

 

IV. Maintaining stable policies for the encouraged foreign investment industries. The revised Catelogue centers on opening wider to the outside world and structural adjustment, does not make large adjustment to the encouraged industries, and continuously encourages foreign investment in the fields of modern agriculture, advanced manufacturing, high and new technology, energy conservation and environmental protection and modern services, and encourage the transformation and upgrade of traditional industries, and promote use of new technologies, new processes, new materials and new equipment.

 

Source: Translated from Invest Guangzhou, December 8, 2016.