MNCs in the News-2019-03-29

China

A senior Chinese official stated that “China has begun the revision of its negative list for foreign investment and will continue to carry out test programs for further opening-up in free trade zones.” The official added that “the country would introduce more opening-up measures for agriculture, mining, manufacturing and services and allow wholly owned foreign enterprises (WOFEs) to operate in more areas.” On top of this, the government will soon publish a new catalogue of industries in which foreign direct investment (FDI) is encouraged (Ouyang Shijia and Ma Si, “Negative list update opens doors wider,” The Telegraph, March 22, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world/china-watch/business/negative-lis...)

In conjunction with its trade talks with Washington, Beijing has decided to accommodate some of the United States (US)’ demands to expand its financial market opening. Chinese premier Li Keqiang announced China will allow foreign banks and securities and insurance companies to access China’s financial service sector and will work to create more favorable policies for foreign investors to trade Chinese bonds. Beyond this, Beijing offered to let American cloud computing companies operate in Chinese free-trade zones (FTZs) (Kevin Yao and Dominique Patton, “China pledges to expand financial market opening as U.S. trade delegation arrives,” Reuters, March 28, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-boao/china-pledges-to-expand-fi...)

Due to Beijing’s new round of liberalizing reforms, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell said that his company plans to expand its presence in China in both the upstream and petrochemical manufacturing sectors. He said “Shell, as an importer of gas, as well as a very strong domestic producer of gas, will continue to work with the country’s State-owned enterprises (SOEs) to understand how it can participate in other projects, either through investment or technical services, to help domestic players develop domestic resources” (Zheng Xin, “Royal Dutch Shell to expand upstream presence in China,” China Daily, March 29, 2019, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201903/29/WS5c9d7665a3104842260b3427.html)

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has backed away from his criticisms of China. Because Brazil’s economy is trying to recover, Bolsonaro wants to avoid antagonizing one of the leading investors in Brazil. The Chinese ambassador in Brasilia said that the two governments are working together on creating measures to protect investments and that Beijing’s relations with Brazil are “mature, healthy, and dynamic.” The new Brazilian government has been clear that it will follow the spirit of contract law to boost bilateral economic ties (Samy Adghirni, “China says it’s willing to seek trade, investment deals with Brazil,” Bloomberg, March 28, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-28/china-says-willing-to...)

*The information used herein is gathered from sources believed to be reliable, but the Wong MNC Center does not guarantee their accuracy. The content in this section does not necessarily represent the official view of the Wong MNC Center, its Board of Directors, or its Advisory Board.