A good business environment is like fresh air, that no foreign investor can resist. China, with its sincerity and ongoing efforts, offers foreign investors such air, trying to make its business environment attractive to foreign capital.

China used to rely on favorable policies to attract foreign investment, but is now working to increase its soft power.

The country has made its rules more transparent by aligning them with international ones. In 2018, it phased out automobile shareholding limits for foreign investors in special-purpose vehicles as well as new energy vehicles manufacturing, while those for commercial and passenger vehicles are set to be lifted in 2020 and 2022 respectively.

In addition, the new negative lists for foreign investors, currently in planning, will make China’s manufacturing sector even more transparent.

“The new negative lists will not only introduce China’s new measures of opening-up in 2018, but also disclose its movements over the next couple of years,” said a related official with the National Development and Reform Commission.

China has already significantly broadened its market access to embrace more opportunity. On May 2, China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission officially granted ICBC-AXA Life permission to set up an asset management business. It is the first joint-venture insurance and asset management company in China since the country proposed an acceleration to the opening-up of the insurance industry.

Enhanced public service is another highlight of China’s movement to optimize the business environment. The replacement of review and approval by filing with the relevant authorities in cosmetics import is a great example.

“Such replacement not only simplifies the process, but also saves human time and resources for exporters, thus reducing cost in logistics and storage,” said a manager of Shiseido (China) Investment Co Ltd.

This measure was implemented last May and has greatly reduced the import period of cosmetics from at least two months to only five days.

“With improvements to the business environment and the decrease in institutional costs, more and more foreign cosmetics companies have come to China for investment,” said an official with the market supervision and administration bureau of Pudong district, Shanghai.

Now the Ministry of Commerce and related departments are working to further optimize the business environment. China hopes to join hands with each country to build a more reliable and open international economic system, to realize win-win cooperation and common development.