Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what restrictions apply to British firms seeking to acquire Chinese commercial assets.

The UK Government places no restrictions on British firms looking to invest in China and the stock of UK foreign direct investment (FDI) in China was £11.6bn in 2016, 17.7% higher than in 2015. Some UK businesses looking to invest in China face multiple restrictions and China has an overall FDI restrictiveness index of 0.327 on the OECD FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index, the fourth most restrictive of the sixty-two countries for which data is available. China’s Catalogue for Guidance of Foreign Invested Industries, which is revised periodically, places sectors into approved, restricted and prohibited categories. Examples of some prohibited sectors include sensitive areas such as the exploration and exploitation of minerals, the creation of genetically modified crops, livestock and seeds and the processing of traditional Chinese medicines.

At the 9th UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue, the UK welcomed China’s decision in November 2017 to raise the caps on direct and indirect equity ownership by foreign investors across a range of financial services sectors.