Experts praise new overseas-investment rules

China's new regulations on overseas investments make it easier for Chinese companies to invest in the United States, investment experts said at a panel discussion.

"The regulation marks a huge progress in terms of the size of the investments from China that need to be approved by the government authorities," Henry H. Liu, partner of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, said in the discussion on Tuesday that was held by the China General Chamber of Commerce-USA in New York.

China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) recently issued a new version of Outbound Investment Project Approval and Filing Regulation, which increased the NDRC's approval authority from $300million to $1billion.

A Chinese overseas project with an investment of less than $1 billion in a non-restricted sector no longer needs to be approved but only to be "filed" to the NDRC, according to the regulation.

Then the authority will issue letter of filing acceptance within seven business days.

Projects in the restricted category such as large-scale land development and grid will still need to be approved.

The regulation does not give specific information about how the filing will be processed or detailed requirements the project should meet to get the file accepted.

"Such change s reduce the time we need to prepare for the materials required by NDRC for project approval. If the filing table is only one or two pages, our work will be much easier," said Linsen Zhang, vice-president and CFO of China Construction America, who participated in the discussion.

China Construction America, a subsidiary of China State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd in the Americas, officially completed the acquisition of Plaza Construction recently.

"The government needs to give us more freedom and trust, but I understand its concerns because there are so many Chinese companies entered in the US market," Zhang said.

"Overall it is a great step forward and definitely shows the government's good intentions to help companies move forward," Henry said.

He added that there are a few issues about the regulations that the authority should be able to address with some more detailed rules.

The new regulation is effective May 8 and marks the third amendment since 2004 when China for the first time put forward its overseas investment regulation with "go-global" investment strategy.

Chen Xiaomin, a global partner of the DeHeng Law Offices, thinks that the regulation was issued because of the rapid development of China's foreign investment.

"China's outbound investment last year reached almost $100 billion among which more than $14 billion is in the US alone, about a 30 percent jump than the previous year. Because of that, Chinese authorities issued a series of new regulations including this one," Chen said in the panel discussion.

According to a report made by the Rhodium Group recently, Chinese investment in the US covers multiple fields including automobile, information technology and machinery equipment.

Though the amount of China's investment in the US is large, difficulties remain for Chinese companies because of the different regulatory systems in the US and China.

"Certain requirements of tax and investment restrictions are not clarified, and some Chinese companies have to cancel their projects in the US in the last minute because they are told the project is ‘sensitive'," Sandy Chu, a principal at Grant Thornton LLP, said i on Tuesday.

Chu said that it is a common problem for both Chinese and the US investors, because of the lack of information towards the other market, "so there needs to be more communications about these issues".

"I suggest Chinese companies do more detailed analysis and evaluation to before they launch the project and find a good law firm if not familiar with the process, and then to be patient in the filing process," said Zhang from China Construction America.