China’s lead food and health safety regulator, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), will focus on continued restructuring and increased enforcement efforts in 2015, according to statements made to the US-China Business Council (USCBC). USCBC led a group of eight companies in a roundtable discussion with Director General Yuan Lin of the CFDA in Beijing on December 5.
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The elimination of joint venture restrictions and removal of “prohibited” and “restricted” labels for foreign investment in key sectors in the new draft Catalogue Guiding Foreign Investment (CGFI) mark progress for US companies in some sectors in China.

When a foreign company wants to construct a new building in China, it is required to work with a so-called “design institute,” a Chinese company that must approve every part of the design. Although this is ostensibly a simple process, US companies have found a number of challenges that frequently arise when working with design institutes.
Intellectual property has received high-level attention from the Chinese government in recent weeks, with government agencies actively touting progress on intellectual property (IP) issues, particularly increased enforcement activity and a growth in registered patents, trademarks, and copyrights through the first half of 2014.
Overcapacity, or a glut of production capabilities, is a growing concern for US-China Business Council (USCBC) member companies in their China operations, according to USCBC’s 2014 business environment survey.