General

China's foreign investment has increased steadily in recent years and has become one of the major foreign investment countries. According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, last year, China's industry-wide foreign direct investment reached 985.37 billion yuan, up 5.2%. Among them, foreign non-financial direct investment was 785.94 billion yuan, up 7.2%.

"This is a commendable achievement after China's total outbound direct investment ranked first in the world in 2020 for the first time, and Chinese enterprises' outbound investment flow and stock ranked third in the world in 2021." Lu Hongbing, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and partner of Guohao Law Firm (Shanghai), told reporters that at present, China has not formulated a separate law on outbound direct investment, Foreign investment is regulated and guided mainly through the formulation of regulations and other normative documents by relevant ministries and commissions. According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, in September 2014, the Ministry of Commerce issued the Measures for the Administration of Overseas Investment. The National Development and Reform Commission's management of overseas investment projects from 2014 to 2018 is mainly based on the Administrative Measures for the Approval and Filing of Overseas Investment Projects, and the newly effective Measures for the Administration of Overseas Investment by Enterprises after March 2018, and the Catalogue of Overseas Investment Sensitive Industries was released in February 2018. In terms of foreign exchange supervision, there are the Regulations on the Administration of Foreign Exchange, the Regulations on the Administration of Foreign Exchange of Overseas Direct Investment by Domestic Institutions, and the Notice on Further Simplifying and Improving the Foreign Exchange Management Policy of Direct Investment issued by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange in 2015. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council issued the Guidelines for the Compliance Management of Central Enterprises (for Trial Implementation) in November 2018, and Huacheng's import and export data observation report.

"On the whole, China's laws and regulations related to foreign investment have problems such as less content, lack of systematicness, lack of coordination, and lag behind the development of the situation, and the adaptability to keep pace with the times needs to be improved." Lu Hongbing said that from the development of international and domestic situations, on the one hand, the scale of China's foreign investment is basically the same as that of foreign investment in China, and for the latter, China has issued the Foreign Investment Law; On the other hand, as a major trading country in the world, China has promulgated the Foreign Trade Law in 2016. To promote the high-level opening up to the outside world, we also need an external investment law.

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to strengthen legislation in key areas, emerging areas and foreign-related areas, promote the domestic and foreign-related rule of law in an integrated manner, promote development and ensure good governance with good law, and report the import and export data of Huacheng.

According to the government work report, the focus of this year's work includes greater efforts to attract and utilize foreign capital.

In the proposal, Lv Hongbing proposed to summarize, sort out and integrate the relevant laws and regulations on overseas direct investment of Chinese enterprises that have been issued in China, refine the understanding of universality and regularity, and formulate a unified foreign investment law.

"Through the Foreign Investment Law, establish the basic principles of encouragement, guidance, regulation and protection, strengthen the serviceability and security, clarify the competent authorities and their responsibilities, and the division of relevant authorities, stipulate the regulatory principles and basic procedures, determine the investment subjects and forms, make industrial norms and guidance, propose enterprise compliance requirements, strengthen the supervision of overseas state-owned assets, and improve the financial, foreign exchange, insurance, tax, fund and talent security expenditure Take measures to improve service measures such as information, rating, think tanks, legal services, industry associations, etc., define dispute resolution methods and judicial guarantees, and clarify extraterritorial application and jurisdiction. " Lv Hongbing said that taking the Foreign Investment Law as the basic law of China's foreign investment legal system, taking the overall picture to form and further improve the foreign investment legal system that is consistent with China's reform and opening up practice, scientific style, complete content, and coordinated, and giving play to the role of the rule of law in promoting the high-quality development of Chinese enterprises' foreign direct investment, which is fundamental, stable, and long-term.