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E-mail Xinhua, February 19, 2025
China on Wednesday issued an action plan to stabilize foreign investment in 2025, which was approved by a recent State Council executive meeting.
The action plan was devised by the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission, according to a notice issued by the General Office of the State Council.
Foreign investment is a key aspect of promoting high-standard opening-up, and plays a significant role in fostering new quality productive forces and advancing Chinese modernization, according to the action plan, which was formulated to ensure stable foreign investment in 2025.
Per the plan, China will support pilot regions in effectively implementing opening-up policies related to such areas as value-added telecommunication, biotechnology and wholly foreign-owned hospitals, providing whole-journey services for foreign-invested projects in these sectors.
The country will continue expanding its pilot programs to open up fields such as telecommunication and medical services in a timely manner.
According to the plan, China will seize the initiative by opening its education and cultural sectors further, publish implementation plans, and push those plans forward steadily.
The plan calls for efforts to expand the national pilot program to open the services industry further and promote the orderly opening-up of the biomedical sector.
Additionally, it emphasizes encouraging foreign equity investment in China to attract more high-quality foreign direct investment in the country's listed companies.
China will lift restrictions on domestic loans for foreign-invested enterprises, allowing these firms to use domestic financing for equity investments, according to the plan.
It highlights key sectors to attract foreign investment. According to the plan, foreign businesses are encouraged to invest in animal husbandry-related fields such as breeding, feeding equipment production and production of feed and veterinary medicine, and enjoy national treatment.
It also supports foreign enterprises to participate in China's new industrialization, with a focus on high-tech fields. Foreign investment is also welcomed in services sectors such as elderly care, culture and tourism, sports, health care, vocational education, and finance.
It calls for clarifying standards for the government procurement of domestic products, and for measures to ensure products produced by enterprises of different ownership within China participate equally in government procurement activities.
The plan was approved at a State Council executive meeting held earlier this month. The meeting highlighted the important role of foreign-invested enterprises in employment, export stability and industrial upgrading, and urged more practical and effective measures to maintain existing investments and attract new ones.
In 2024, 59,080 new foreign-invested enterprises were established in China, up 9.9 percent year on year. China attracted an annual overseas investment of over 1 trillion yuan (about 139.5 billion U.S. dollars) for three consecutive years from 2021 to 2023.
