China to improve access for foreign companies

BEIJING: China's State Council, or cabinet, said on Saturday the country is committed to improve access for foreign companies in China, as part of "a new round of high-level opening up".

According to a statement released on Saturday following a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, the Chinese government will create an environment for fair competition for foreign firms.

"It´s important part of pushing forward a new round of high-level opening up," the statement said.

In the future, except for certain sensitive industries in which access for foreign companies is restricted, foreign investments would only require registration, rather than approval.

The statement did not offer details on how the new system would work.

It also said the Chinese government would take further steps to improve market entry for foreign companies.

The State Council´s statement comes at a time when the foreign business community in China has become highly critical of the current unbalanced access for foreign companies in China.

Last month, a top European business lobby warned China that it risked a protectionist backlash unless it opened its markets faster to foreign investment.

Progress on China´s economic reforms has been "highly disappointing", the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in an annual paper, released as China prepared to host leaders from the world´s biggest economies at last month´s G20 summit in Hangzhou.

Meanwhile, China´s mountain of foreign exchange reserves dropped around $19 billion in September to a five-year low, government data showed, with the central bank spending heavily to defend its currency against capital outflows.

The world´s largest currency hoard fell to under $3.17 trillion, the People´s Bank of China (PBOC) said on its website Friday, below median analyst forecasts of $3.18 trillion in a Bloomberg News survey.

It was the third straight month of declines and brought China´s reserves to their lowest level since April 2011, Bloomberg said.

Analysts said the decline indicated China was selling foreign exchange to buy its yuan currency amid capital flight spurred by slowing growth in the world´s second largest economy. The data came days after the yuan´s official entry into the International Monetary Fund´s elite SDR basket of currencies, a symbolic coup for Beijing policymakers who are seeking to expand international use of the currency.