China passed a law to open up more sectors for foreign investment and protect foreign firms.
With U. S. trade talks at a delicate moment, China on Friday hurriedly passed a foreign investment law meant to placate the Americans amid some skepticism from Western business groups.
China’s largely ceremonial parliament, the National People’s Congress, overwhelmingly passed the law that sought to stiffen prohibitions against Chinese officials and companies pilfering trade secrets.
It would also open up more sectors for foreign investment and strive — in broad strokes — to protect the “legitimate rights and interests” of foreign firms.
As votes were cast at the Great Hall of the People on Friday morning — with just a handful in token opposition — state media sprung into action touting the bill’s benefits for foreign companies and highlighting how efficiently it moved through the Chinese bureaucracy in recent months. The measure was tweaked as recently as this week in what was widely seen as an effort by Beijing to address a core complaint raised by Washington’s trade negotiators and foreign business groups.
But the response on Friday was lukewarm.
“The last-minute efforts are appreciated, but the changes shouldn’t have been controversial in the first place and only address a small slice of the overall set of concerns our members have about the uneven playing field foreign companies encounter in China,” said Tim Stratford, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
