China is backsliding on reforms to open up its economy to foreign business, thereby hindering competition and imperiling its shift to a new model of sustainable growth, the EU Chamber of Commerce in China said yesterday.
In its annual position paper, the chamber said government intervention in industrial policy and restrictions on foreign investment had been growing in the last three years, making China less and less attractive to European companies.
“The reform drive has to be kick-started again,” group president Joerg Wuttke told a news conference.
The chamber said the 1,400 firms it represents remained optimistic about China and their own prospects.
“However, right across industries, European businesses are still impeded by issues concerning market access, legal and political transparency and the protection of intellectual property rights,” he said.
“The specter of protectionism has also appeared, and European companies are increasingly concerned by the tendency for local companies to be favored over foreign-invested ones,” he said.
The failure of the world’s top five wind operators to have a single national wind development project in China is just one example the chamber gives in arguing that foreign firms face discrimination.
Wuttke said foreign firms had been “systematically excluded” by a bidding process that is designed to favor domestic companies because it looks only at the initial cost of a turbine rather than the all-in cost over its 25-year life cycle.
By failing to create a level playing field, Beijing was hurting not just foreign business but its own prospects.
“European businesses remain convinced that the key driver of long-term economic development is the creation and promotion of freer and fairer market conditions for all companies in China,” the report said.
CARROT AND STICK: A new program aims to encourage those who have overstayed their visas to turn themselves in before the NIA increases penalties and enforcement Foreign visitors who entered Taiwan before today would be granted automatic 30-day visa extensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The new measure is in response to tightened border control measures and flight bans implemented worldwide to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bureau of Consular Affairs said. “All travelers who entered Taiwan on or before March 21, 2020, on a visitor visa, a landing visa, or through a visa-waiver program and who have not overstayed their legal stay period will be granted an automatic 30-day extension,” the ministry said in a statement on its Web site. No application is required, although the
Passengers on domestic flights would not be allowed to board if their temperature is more than 37.5°C or if they refuse to have their temperatures taken, Uni Air (立榮航空) and Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) said yesterday. The two airlines made the announcement after their parent companies — EVA Airways (長榮航空) and China Airlines (CAL, 中華航空) respectively — announced similar pre-boarding requirements on Saturday, along with a requirement that passengers wear masks during their flights, except when they have meals or drinks. Uni Air and Mandarin Airlines said domestic passengers would be required to wear masks from the time they start using self-help
CASE COUNT RISES: One of the new domestic cases is a nurse at a long-term care center, but so far tests on all the residents and other staff have been negative Flight transits through all Taiwanese airports would be banned for two weeks, starting tomorrow, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday as it announced 16 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the nation’s total to 169. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the center, said all flight transits would be banned through April 7. In light of the rapidly increasing number of imported COVID-19 cases, there was a need to further reduce cross-border travel and the risk of disease transmission, the center said. The Civil Aeronautics Administration has informed airlines about the new measures, and anyone who has
A public health expert yesterday warned that too many people are meeting in small groups in coffee shops and restaurants without keeping a proper distance from one another, as he urged the government to loosen the criteria for testing young Taiwanese returning from abroad for COVID-19. People need to keep a social distance of at least 2m, National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Public Health dean Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) said as the college presented its seventh weekly report on COVID-19 at a morning news conference. More than 300,000 confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in more than three-quarters of all
RSS