From the first issue in 1974 and well into the 2010s, the China Business Review was an indispensable resource for businesses, researchers, and policymakers who needed a first-hand account of the challenges and the tremendous opportunities posed by the China market.
Chinese companies looking for deals abroad face five main challenges when globalizing through M&A —including the often overlooked human capital.
The Chinese healthcare sector, which accounted for 6 percent of the country’s GDP in 2016, is expected to capture a 10 percent share in the coming years. Racing to establish a modern system of coverage, services, and products to accommodate the world’s largest population and fastest growing economy, China faces a number of development challenges. As China increasingly makes use of foreign products, services, and expertise to accomplish its reform goals, foreign companies are in a position to advance China’s reform goals in the healthcare sector, if allowed market access.
It is old news that the Chinese market is highly competitive and unlike any other in the world. Products that sell in London are not guaranteed to sell in China. The rainbow-lensed promises of e-commerce seem to be an easy way to access China’s 770.4 million working population, 0.2 percent or over 1.5 million of which have an average income of $500,000. However, the online store closures of a number of retail and luxury brand giants indicate that the competition is no less fierce online.
Costs of complying with China’s environmental protection laws are rising as companies operating there face higher compliance costs, more frequent inspections, and a swath of new laws and regulations on emissions. Already held to high expectations of energy efficiency and low emissions, companies operating in China should prepare for inevitably stricter standards to come.
Leaders of the world’s two most powerful economies will sit down together for the first time tomorrow. The list of topics to cover could be long. But this meeting is more about the relationship that will be established between President Donald J. Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
Recently, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has been thrust into the limelight with a spate of high-profile deals. An inter-agency committee of the US government, CFIUS has the authority to review, for national security reasons, any transaction that would result in a foreign entity having control of a US asset. CFIUS has the power to investigate, modify or recommend that the president block any transaction for which it judges national security concerns cannot be mitigated.
The recent two sessions of China’s legislature and advisory bodies were resplendent with “core of the core” choreography ensuring everybody was in lock-step with President Xi Jinping, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, and with the party, the authority on government entities and action. On the policy side, the prevailing narrative was to slow-walk reforms while fast-tracking state-led entrepreneurship and top-shelf technology acquisition.
Forecasting the financial performance of a proposed business and accurately assessing the investment required to launch operations is always a complex affair. In China, where foreign currency restrictions significantly complicate cross-border transactions, the strategic planning of funding foreign-invested entities (FIEs) is of particular importance.
Combined Chinese direct investment in the advanced economies of North America and Europe more than doubled in 2016 to a record $94.2 billion as China continued its transition to a new growth model, in line with its rapidly maturing economy.
China’s State Council has issued a circular of the government’s intentions to further open the economy and boost foreign investment. The circular is part of the effort to build China’s so-called “new open economic system,” with measures focused on streamlining government administration, improving regulations, and reducing institutional transaction costs to create a favorable business environment for foreign investment.
