The Regulations on Protection of Rights and Interests of Foreign Investors in Guangdong Province will come into force on March 1, 2022, according to a news conference held by the Standing Committee of Guangdong Provincial People's Congress on February 22.
It is the first local regulation targeting protecting foreign investment in China, echoing the Foreign Investment Law of the People’s Republic of China that came into effect on January 1, 2020.
Canton Fair (Photo: Nanfang Daily)
The Regulations focuses on intellectual property rights, standard setting, government procurement, technical cooperation and foreign complaints following main concerns of foreign-invested enterprises.
Equal treatment for foreign investment is one of the highlights of the Regulations. According to the Regulations, Guangdong shall implement the management systems of pre-establishment national treatment and negative list for foreign investment as per the national provisions. People’s governments at all levels and their related departments may not set conditions that prohibit the entry of foreign investment into the areas that are not on the negative list.
The Regulations also clarifies equal protection for foreign-invested enterprises and domestic-invested enterprises in specific fields like government funding arrangements, government investment projects, land supply, tax relief, qualifications and permits, standards formulation, project application, professional title appraisal, and human resources policies.
In terms of supervision, the Regulations points out that foreign investments involving new technologies, industries, business forms, operating modes shall be supervised inclusively and prudently.
By the end of 2021, 289,000 foreign-invested enterprises have been established in Guangdong, and the province’s actual use of foreign investment has reached 523.91 billion USD in total. In 2021, the province saw its actual use of foreign investment of 184 billion yuan, an increase of 13.6% over 2020 and a two-year average increase of 10.0%.
Full text: Regulations on Protection of Rights and Interests of Foreign Investors in Guangdong Province
Author | Abby
Editor | Wing, Steven, Nan, Jerry
