China fully opens manufacturing sector to foreign investors in landmark opening up move

BEIJING -- China has removed all market access restrictions for foreign investors in the manufacturing sector, a landmark move made by the world's second-largest economy as it opens its doors wider.

The new edition of the national negative list for foreign investment took effect on Friday, scrapping the two remaining manufacturing-related items on the previous list.

The items on the latest negative list, which specifies fields that are off-limits to foreign investors, have been further slashed to 29.

Another negative list applied in the country's free trade zones, which are pioneering pilots in opening up practices, achieved zero-restrictions on foreign investment in manufacturing in 2021.

The new national negative list signifies that China's manufacturing industry has reached a world-leading level of openness, as almost all developing countries impose restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, and even some developed economies still maintain certain foreign investment limits in the field, according to a research institute under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country's top economic planner.

For China, the manufacturing industry is the earliest sector to open up to foreign investors, and it is also the most competitive and most closely coordinated sector in terms of global industrial division of labor.

China's manufacturing value added surpassed that of the United States for the first time in 2010, and accounted for approximately 30 percent of the global total in 2023, making the country the world's largest manufacturer for 14 consecutive years.

The country has seen steady foreign investment growth in its high-tech manufacturing in recent years. In the first nine months of this year, the medical equipment and instrument manufacturing industry, as well as the computer and office equipment manufacturing sector, saw actual utilization of foreign investment up 57.3 percent and 29.2 percent year-on-year, respectively.

While China's industry has made significant progress in development, overall, it is still at a crucial juncture of "transitioning from being large to being strong and proceeding on an uphill journey," Jin Zhuanglong, China's minister of industry and information technology, said in a July press conference, citing prominent weaknesses in areas like key core technologies and basic industrial capacities.

China will leverage its vast market advantages to support exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and foreign enterprises, and make the manufacturing sector higher-end, smarter, and more eco-friendly, according to the NDRC.