The Regulation of Beijing Municipality on Foreign Investment (the Regulation for short), containing General Provisions, Investment Promotion, Investment Protection, Investment Services, Investment Management, Legal Liabilities, and Supplementary Provisions, was implemented on July 1. The Regulation aims to boost foreign investment, protect foreign investors' legitimate rights and interests, standardize foreign investment management, serve and integrate into the new pattern of comprehensive opening-up, promote a higher level of opening up to the outside world and enable high-quality development. Key features of the Regulation are as follows:

1. A more improved policy environment

The Regulation's primary objective is to form a better policy environment for foreign investment, fostering its growth in Beijing. Removing hidden barriers that hinder foreign investment access is key to nurturing a market environment characterized by equitable competition. The Regulation introduces a pre-entry national treatment along with a negative list management system for foreign investment. Industries outside the negative list are managed by regulations akin to those for domestic investment. The Regulation promotes foreign investment in strategic emerging industries, advanced manufacturing, and modern services, and the establishment of multinational headquarters and research and development (R&D) centers. Emphasizing on fair competition, the Regulation ensures equal policy support for foreign-funded enterprises and their participation in government procurement. Furthermore, the Regulation requires that the process of formulating foreign-related policies be open and transparent, and opinions from foreign-funded enterprises and relevant entities be widely heard in order to actively advance Beijing's further opening-up.

2. Better investment services

Moreover, investment services stand as a key feature of the Regulation. Building upon superior laws, the Regulation enhances the service guarantee methods that have earned high praise from foreign-funded enterprises in Beijing's foreign investment practices in recent years. It outlines specific guidelines for innovative measures like the municipal comprehensive policy service platform ('Jingce' platform) and the round-table-based government-enterprise communication mechanism. Additionally, the Regulation underlines the importance of streamlining the registration process for foreign-funded enterprises, ensuring its whole online processing. It supports the integration of government services related to foreign investors into government service centers, accepting their requests at comprehensive service windows. Furthermore, the Regulation calls for safe cross-border data flow for R&D, production, and sales activities of foreign enterprises, providing eligible enterprises with more convenience, and helping pilot free trade zones receive enhanced preferential measures. The Regulation also pushes for the establishment of a directory for the recognition of overseas professional qualifications and offering corresponding personnel in foreign-funded enterprises convenient entry and exit procedures in order to enhance the quality of foreign investment services and advance the facilitation of foreign investment.

3. More comprehensive protection of rights and interests

Finally, the Regulation reinforces protection for the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors, placing a strong emphasis on protecting intellectual property rights and resolving disputes. It stipulates the establishment of a sound intellectual property protection mechanism, the application of punitive damages to deliberate infringers, and ensures that the government fulfills its commitments and contracts with foreign investors, and if necessary, compensates for incurred losses in accordance with the law. Besides, the Regulation requires Beijing to establish and strengthen a multi-tiered and diverse communication mechanism between the government and foreign-funded enterprises which includes regular feedback collection from foreign-funded enterprises, chambers of commerce and associations, addressing enterprise concerns via hotlines and feedback collection systems. Moreover, the Regulation requires Beijing to minimize redundant inspections of foreign-funded enterprises, decrease spot-check frequency on low-risk enterprises, and ensure an equal application of administrative penalties across domestic and foreign-funded enterprises. These measures collectively aim to offer more comprehensive protection on the rights and interests of foreign investors, and establish a just and equitable investment environment for them.

(Source: Chinadaily.com.cn)