China Draft Negative List 2021
On October 8th, the National Development and Reform Commission issued a revised draft of the Negative List for Market Access (2021 Edition) in order to optimize the investment environment and for a further opening-up. The Negative List consists of two categories: the prohibited access, which list the industries where market players cannot enter, and the permitted (but restricted) access, where an entity can enter only upon approval, qualification, license, permission etc.…
Unlike the Negative List for Foreign Investment Access, the Negative List for Market Access applies to domestic and foreign entities, including state-owned enterprises, private companies, joint-ventures, and foreign-invested enterprises.
The revised draft lists 6 prohibited access items (compared to the 5 in the 2020 Edition) and 111 permitted access items (7 less than the 2020 Edition).
The new item in the prohibited access category refers to the prohibition to conduct news and media-related businesses in violation of regulations. In the specific, non-public capital entities are not allowed to engage in activities and businesses such as news gathering, editing, and broadcasting, invest in the establishment and operation of a news organization, engage in the live broadcasting of political, economic, military, diplomatic, social, cultural technological, etc.… events, to introduce news published by foreign entities and to hold forums and summits in the news field.
In addition, mining of cryptocurrencies has been included among the forbidden businesses, resulting in a complete ban in the territory of China.
On the other hand, 7 items have been removed from the permitted but restricted access category (upon license, qualification, approval, and permission). Those items are as following:
Without permission, no offshore satellite resources may be leased, or international communications import, and export bureau established;
No shares may be issued, or a merger or reorganization of a particular listed company may be carried out without permission;
Without permission, may not engage in foreign-related statistical investigation business;
Without obtaining permission or qualification, no construction of lightning protection devices shall be carried out in a restricted area, and no lightning protection devices shall be detected;
Security training may not be carried out without permission;
You may not engage in business related to medical radioactive products without obtaining permission or qualification conditions;
Internet financial information services may not be performed without permission.
The above businesses, that were permitted but restricted according to the Negative List 2020 Edition, have been removed from the 2021 Draft edition.