Regulations still a concern for foreign firms: survey

The top challenge for foreign investors in doing business in China remains government regulatory issues, and this has been the case for the past nine years, the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, a Guangzhou-based non-profit organization, said Tuesday in its 2013 White Paper on the Business Environment in China.

Harley Seyedin, president of the chamber, said in a press conference Tuesday that the foreign companies they surveyed for the 2013 report revealed that their biggest concern was insufficient government transparency when enforcing laws and regulations.

This has also slowed down progress toward market liberalization, the companies said.

The survey polled 425 companies, half of which are US-backed with the rest having partners in other markets including Europe and Latin America. About 80.7 percent of the companies provide goods and services to the Chinese market while 19.3 percent export goods from China.

Local competition and increasing labor costs in China were the second and third biggest challenges, respectively, for foreign investors.