Foreign-funded enterprises will get more 'bonuses' in China

To encourage foreign investment, the Chinese government is exempting foreign-funded enterprises from government approval for many proposals in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

Wang Shouwen, assistant minister of the Ministry of Commerce of China, says that the ministry is analyzing whether this approach can be applied to the whole country in order to improve the investment environment.

Some take the view that the investment environment in China is deteriorating. China is conducting anti-monopoly investigations of foreign enterprises including Microsoft, Qualcomm and Benz, raising widespread concern in the business community. On the subject of the investigations, Shen Danyang, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce, said that anti-monopoly probes have become the norm in the international community. Foreign-funded and domestic companies are both treated equally before China's Anti-trust laws. "There is no xenophobia," says Shen.

Still attractive to foreign investments

Experts say that China is still the first choice for international investment, ranking top among the developing countries. In terms of this ranking, Wang points out that utilized foreign capital grew up by 5.3 per cent to USD117.6 billion last year, ranking 2nd in the world and 1st in the developing countries. China has been the first choice for international investment for 21 years.

In addition to relatively low-cost labor and land, China benefits from excellent infrastructure, a comprehensive range of industrial facilities, and enormous market, and reasonable economic policies. As the process of reform accelerates, foreign-funded enterprises will benefit from additional reforms.