JOINT EFFORTS TO CRACK NUTS
Though both sides share a strong aspiration for a treaty to facilitate and boost bilateral investment, the BIT negotiations have by no means advanced as smoothly as expected given complicated situations.
Further unremitting efforts from both countries are called for to crack the hardest nuts -- to hammer out shorter and better negative lists from both sides, among other difficulties.
Denoon said "there are many areas on the negative list in China and many areas on the negative list in this country," adding "how to get a good trade among those is not easy to work on."
The negative list approach, generally viewed as more liberal to foreign investment, means that all sectors are open to foreign investment except those listed, while the positive list approach, adopted by China for many years, means that only listed sectors are accessible to foreign investment.
Zhang Xiangchen, Chinese deputy international trade representative and assistant minister of commerce, told reporters in June that "the negative list issue is more difficult for China," as it "represents a new challenge" and will "fundamentally change the foreign investment administration regime in China."
To produce the negative list and speed up the process of the negotiations, China has done tremendous work.An inter-ministerial mechanism in the State Council have been established, and "tens of thousands of laws, regulations and rules" governing foreign investment with the positive list approach have been reviewed, according to the official.
For the United States, aside from an improved negative list, its investment environment for Chinese enterprises calls for urgent improvement.
Many Chinese companies have been put to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency organization tasked to review foreign investors' acquisition activities in the country, for national security reasons.
The number of Chinese companies subject to such reviews is disproportionately high considering China's relatively small investment scale in the United States.
As a result, Chinese firms are facing rising uncertainties and restraints when investing in the U.S. soil.
Jeffery Schott, senior fellow at the PIIE, said there is a need to improve the transparency of the CFIUS. "What the BIT can do is to increase the transparency of the CFIUS procedure to ensure that it is a narrowed focus."
China hopes that the U.S. side could treat Chinese enterprises equally, remove its discriminating practices, and drop the wrong hypothesis that all Chinese investments have a governmental background with untold political and military motives, Li said. Enditem
Xinhua reporters Zhang Bihong, Ye Zaiqi and Ye Shan in Beijing, Gao Pan, Huang Jihui, Li Ming and Wang Naishui in the United States contributed to the story.
