Revamp of Foreign Investment Laws in China: More Opportunities or Challenges?

With the curtain falling on the Second Session of the Thirteenth National People's Congress ("NPC") of the People's Republic of China ("PRC"), the PRC Foreign Investment Law (中华人民共和国外商投资法, "Foreign Investment Law") was, as widely anticipated previously, passed by the NPC on 15 March 2019, and will come into effect from 1 January 2020. The Foreign Investment Law symbolises a landmark change of PRC laws regulating the activities of foreign investment and foreign-invested enterprises ("FIEs") in China. Foreign investors and FIEs should understand what this new law focuses on and what issues are yet to be resolved, so that they may know what opportunities and challenges they face with this new chapter of foreign investment legislation in China.