Daryl Guppy, president of the Northern Territory office for the Australia China Business Council, echoed Agon's views on the determination of the Chinese government to further open up its market to international businesses and said the new Foreign Investment Law represents a significant strategic shift in China's approach to the role of foreign investment in China's economic growth.

"The principle underpinning the Foreign Investment Law is the concept of 'national treatment'. This gives foreign investors rights equivalent to those enjoyed by domestic firms including intellectual property rights, protection of trade secrets and the overseas remittance of profits in renminbi or in foreign currency. Participation in Chinese government procurement tenders by foreign firms is explicitly allowed," said Guppy.

These are giant steps that set the strategic vision for further opening the Chinese economy by diversifying the cooperation landscape to ensure continued economic growth. This law opens the path to capital diversification and to greater integration with the world economy in ways that go beyond being just a supplier of goods, and sets the framework for the investment law.
How the detail is filled in will depend, in part, on how foreign business councils and groups can constructively assist in the process, Guppy said.

China unveiled the regulation on implementing the Foreign Investment Law to better protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors. Premier Li Keqiang signed a State Council decree to publish the regulation, which takes effect on Jan 1, 2020.

China achieved notable progress in ensuring stable foreign direct investment inflow in 2019 thanks to a combination of new policies and measures, Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said at a work conference in Beijing on Dec 29.

In the first 11 months of 2019, the number of foreign-funded projects with an investment of at least $100 million reached 722, up 15.5 percent year-on-year, according to Zhong.

A total of 36,747 new foreign-funded enterprises were established during the same period, while the FDI into the Chinese mainland expanded 6 percent year-on-year to 845.9 billion yuan, according to the Ministry of Commerce.