On December 7, 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission (“NDRC”) and the Ministry of Commerce (“MOFCOM”) jointly announced the issuance of a revised draft for public comment of the Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries (2015 Version) (“Revised Draft”). As the usual practice has been to issue revisions every three to four years, the speed with which the Revised Draft has been worked on demonstrates the proactive attitude of policymakers towards the negative list regulatory approach for foreign investment.
Special access administrative measures (also known as a negative list), a key supporting document to the “pre-access national treatment plus negative list,” were not issued at the time the new regulatory regime was formally introduced in October 2016. The role of the negative list has instead been delegated to the Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries (2015 Version) (“2015 Catalogue”). The 2015 Catalogue, in its layout of encouraged, restricted, and prohibited categories, lacks a clear description of special access administrative measures for foreign investment. The main purpose of the current revisions is to respond to the needs of the new regulatory regime by providing a unified list of restrictions as well as to improve the clarity of the foreign investment access regime.
