China further eases restrictions on foreign investment, promises to promote services trade

BEIJING, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) — The executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Qiang was held on Monday, reviewing and approving four documents, discussing policy measures to support the high-quality development of innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and approving five nuclear power plant projects.

The approved documents included the 2024 edition of the set of special administrative measures (negative list) regarding access to foreign investments.

Under the negative list, China aims to further ease restrictions on foreign investment by completely removing entry barriers in manufacturing, while accelerating the opening up of sectors such as telecommunications, education and healthcare.

Another document approved at the meeting was a set of guidelines for promoting high-quality development of trade in services through high-level opening-up.

The meeting emphasized that accelerating the development of trade in services is necessary to expand high-level opening-up and promote new driving forces of foreign trade.

According to the meeting participants, efforts should be made to promote innovative development in key areas of trade in services, as well as the integration of trade in services and trade in goods.

It also highlighted the importance of efforts to create new drivers of growth in trade in services and to support the international development of professional services such as finance, consulting, design and certification.

The meeting discussed actions aimed at strengthening policy coordination in the areas of taxation, finance, science and technology, industry and human resources in order to support innovative SMEs that use specialised, advanced technologies to produce new or unique products.

Efforts must also be made to make these SMEs smarter, more digitalised and more environmentally friendly to increase their core competitiveness, according to the meeting participants.

Emphasizing that safety is the basis for the development of nuclear energy, the meeting participants stressed the need to tighten safety regulations to ensure the highest level of safety of nuclear energy and promote the long-term, healthy development of this industry.