Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Commerce issued the "Catalogue of Industries Encouraged for Foreign Investment (2025 Edition)". This is a revised, expanded and systematically optimized version of the "Encouraged Catalogue" after three years, in light of changes in the domestic and international situation. It demonstrates China's firm determination to continuously expand high-level opening-up, which is conducive to strengthening the encouragement and guidance for foreign investment, boosting market expectations and confidence, and facilitating the construction of a new development pattern and high-quality economic development.
I. Revising and Expanding the "Encouraged Catalogue" is Timely and of Great Significance
Foreign-invested enterprises are important participants in Chinese modernization, China's reform and opening-up as well as innovation, and China's connection with the world and integration into economic globalization. As an important policy to promote foreign investment in China, the "Encouraged Catalogue" has played a crucial role in optimizing the industrial structure of foreign investment, improving the regional layout of foreign investment, and promoting the high-quality development of foreign investment utilization.
Revising and expanding the "Encouraged Catalogue" sends a positive signal of expanding high-level opening-up. Opening-up is China's fundamental national policy. Since the reform and opening-up policy was implemented, China has quickly integrated into the world market and made great strides to catch up with the times. During this process, foreign investment has played an important role. Currently, the competition among countries around the world to attract foreign investment is becoming increasingly fierce. At the same time, some countries have introduced protective measures and restrictive policies targeting foreign investment, which have brought significant challenges to the existing international investment cooperation order. Against this backdrop, revising and expanding the "Encouraged Catalogue" sends a clear signal to the world that China will open its doors wider and wider. This initiative is conducive to better addressing the impact of adverse external factors, responding to the uncertainty of the external environment with the certainty of China's own development, injecting valuable new momentum into the world economy with the stability of China's opening-up, and providing clear, stable and transparent investment expectations for global investors.
Revising and expanding the "Encouraged Catalogue" helps upgrade the industrial structure and improve quality and efficiency. At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating, with new technologies, new formats and new models emerging one after another. Major economies are competing and cooperating in the frontier areas of science, technology and industry. China's economic foundation is solid, with many advantages and strong resilience, which creates broad space for deepening international investment cooperation. From the supply side, revising and expanding the "Encouraged Catalogue" is conducive to including new technologies, new formats and new models in the scope of encouragement, attracting global innovation factors, and realizing the complementary advantages of Chinese and foreign enterprises through deepening international investment cooperation. From the demand side, it helps guide foreign-invested enterprises to better meet China's growing needs in medical and health care, elderly care services, etc., improve people's well-being and further expand domestic demand.
II. The "Encouraged Catalogue" Has a Clear Direction and Distinctive Features
It focuses more on scientific and technological innovation and the development of new productive forces. Foreign investment is a positive force promoting China's scientific and technological innovation and technological progress. In the past 10 years, the R&D investment and the number of valid invention patents of large-scale foreign-invested industrial enterprises in China have increased significantly. At present, China is accelerating the promotion of green, digital and intelligent transformation. The "Encouraged Catalogue" continues to take the field of scientific and technological innovation as the key direction to guide foreign investment, and increases support for advanced manufacturing, high and new technology, R&D and other fields. For example, it provides support in the fields of end products such as equipment manufacturing, key components and important raw materials, so as to facilitate the development of new productive forces.
It focuses more on promoting consumption and improving people's well-being. China is the world's second-largest consumer market, which contains huge investment and consumption potential. To better meet the consumption needs of the people, more high-quality supplies are required. Foreign investment can work synergistically on both the supply and demand sides, and play a more active role in stimulating and meeting domestic consumption potential. The "Encouraged Catalogue" guides foreign investment to flow into fields related to characteristic consumption and business services, which helps introduce advanced business models and improve consumption convenience. The introduction of relevant foreign-invested enterprises can provide more high-quality goods and services, and meet and stimulate diversified and high-quality consumption demands.
It attaches greater importance to optimizing the regional opening-up layout. Optimizing the regional opening-up layout is an inherent requirement for expanding high-level opening-up and accelerating the construction of a new development pattern. We should give full play to the comparative advantages of various regions and form a new pattern of coordinated opening-up. In terms of foreign investment utilization, the revision of this "Encouraged Catalogue" focuses on leveraging the comparative advantages of the central and western regions, the Northeast and other regions in utilizing foreign investment in fields such as mechanical equipment manufacturing, energy and resource development, transportation and logistics, and characteristic resource endowments. By guiding foreign investment to these regions in an orderly manner, it helps better balance the layout of foreign investment between the coastal and inland areas, and between the eastern, central and western regions as well as the Northeast. Through greater efforts to attract foreign investment, it promotes people's employment and industrial transformation and upgrading in the central and western regions and the Northeast.
III. The Prospects for Foreign Investment in China Are Broad and Promising
In recent years, China has steadily advanced institutional opening-up in terms of rules, regulations, management and standards, fully lifted restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector, promoted the orderly expansion of opening-up in fields such as telecommunications, the Internet, education, culture and medical care, and facilitated personnel exchanges between China and foreign countries. These efforts have created a predictable institutional environment and a high-level service support system for multinational corporations to invest in China. At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is making breakthroughs at an accelerated pace, and the historical trend of economic globalization is irresistible. Revising and expanding the "Encouraged Catalogue" effectively responds to the concerns of foreign-invested enterprises, optimizes the directional guidance for foreign investment, and is a proactive layout of China's opening-up in the new situation. Foreign-invested enterprises will deepen practical cooperation with local enterprises in the industrial and supply chains in China's more prosperous and open market, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results as well as common development.
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