Agency : As of the end of 2024, foreign investors had established nearly 1.24 million enterprises in China, with actual use of foreign capital reaching 20.6 trillion yuan ($2.84 trillion).

Recently, China released the 2025 Action Plan for Stabilizing Foreign Investment. To address common concerns and demands raised by foreign enterprises, the plan introduces 20 policy measures across four key areas: expanding self-initiated opening-up in an orderly manner, improving the level of investment promotion, strengthening the functions of opening-up platforms, and redoubling efforts to enhance services.

Overall, the Action Plan stands out in four key aspects.

First, it sends a strong signal of further expanding opening up.

The Action Plan proposes a series of measures to expand pilot programs in sectors such as telecommunications, healthcare, and education. It aims to improve the national comprehensive demonstration zones for expanding opening up in the services sector, further reduce items on the negative lists for market access, expand institutional opening up in rules, regulation, management and standards in free trade zones, and improve the standards of export-oriented economy in national economic and technological development zones.

Second, the Action Plan strengthens policy support.

The plan includes measures to encourage more high-quality long-term foreign investment in listed Chinese companies, research and formulate policies that promote reinvestment by foreign-invested enterprises, encourage foreign investment in a wider range of industries, remove restrictions on foreign-invested investment companies' access to domestic loans, facilitate more rapid launch of new drugs, and support the participation of qualified foreign-invested enterprises in the segmented production of biological products on a pilot basis.

Third, the Action Plan actively promotes foreign investment.

The plan says China will meticulously design and implement a series of "Invest in China" events and fully activate bilateral investment promotion working groups to boost project matchmaking. According to the plan, central and local governments will make coordinated efforts in organizing overseas investment promotion events. China will also refine the rules for setting up foreign-invested investment companies, refined merger and acquisition rules and transaction procedures and support participation by foreign-invested enterprises in China's new industrialization process.

Fourth, the Action Plan addresses key concerns of foreign enterprises.

The Action Plan encourages the inclusion of more foreign-invested projects in the lists of major and key foreign-invested projects. China will speed up developing and issuing relevant documents to specify the standards of domestic products in government procurement, optimize volume-based drug procurement, and continue to expand the coverage of its unilateral visa-free policy in a prudent manner. Besides, China will also organize targeted bank-enterprise matchmaking events, and improve the level of trade facilitation for foreign-invested enterprises.

Vice-minister of commerce and deputy China international trade representative Ling Ji emphasized that the Ministry of Commerce will work closely with local governments and other departments to implement the Action Plan effectively, ensuring quality services for foreign-invested enterprises and creating favorable conditions for companies worldwide to invest in China and benefit from its development opportunities.

While factors such as sluggish global cross-border investment and changes in domestic industry development have led some multinational corporations to adjust their investment strategies, but China's economy has a stable foundation, numerous strengths, remarkable resilience and vast potential, and the dominating trend of a sound Chinese economy for the long term and the elements supporting it have not changed.

The country's massive market size, highly efficient and complete industrial and supply chains, and continuously improving innovation ecosystem provide a solid foundation for foreign investment.

Recently, the 2025 China Business Climate Survey Report released by the American Chamber of Commerce in China revealed that nearly 70 percent of surveyed companies in the consumer sector expect to increase their investment in China in 2025.

Additionally, data from the China's National Bureau of Statistics showed that in 2024, the profit margin of industrial enterprises above the designated size nationwide was 5.4 percent, while that of foreign-invested industrial enterprises above the designated size was 6.6 percent, 1.2 percent higher than the former.

The Action Plan clearly states that measures should be put in place and take effect in 2025. This demonstrates the Chinese government's firm confidence in and commitment to supporting foreign enterprises in investing and expanding their presence in China.

Hua Zhong, head of the department of foreign capital and overseas investment at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), stated that at the end of last year, the NDRC, in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce, released a draft for public consultation on the revision of the Catalogue of Industries for Encouraging Foreign Investment.

The draft contains approximately 1,700 items—over 200 more than the 2022 version. Currently, revisions are being made based on feedback from various stakeholders, and the final version of the 2025 catalog will be released as soon as procedural requirements are met.

The new catalog will prioritize the inclusion of sectors such as advanced manufacturing, modern services, high-tech industries, and environmental protection while also encouraging more foreign investment in the central, western, and northeastern regions of China.

-By Luo Shanshan, People's Daily