"The amendments to the FIE laws represent minor changes in text but have far-reaching systemic implications. Upon taking effect, China will enter the era of pre-establishment national treatment and negative list with regard to the administration of foreign investment, and most foreign invested enterprises will no longer be subject to government approval. To implement these amendments, MOFCOM will soon promulgate the measures on record-filing and the State Council, or more likely MOFCOM and the NDRC, will issue the nationwide negative list. Beyond these, more work needs to be done by the State Council, MOFCOM and other ministries to clean up existing rules to ensure a smooth transition to the new record-filing system. The relevant authorities including the SAIC and SAFE also may need to introduce additional supporting measures, particularly with respect to business registration and foreign exchange control. Last but not least, we do not believe these amendments will prevent the Chinese government from continuing its work to overhaul the foreign investment regime by enacting a unified Foreign Investment Law."

"Certain clarifications and additions have been included in the final official version. For example, now every P2P platform is required to specify “P2P lending information intermediary” in its business scope, which is more reasonable than the approach taken in the draft version, where a P2P platform was required to include this wording in its company name. In the final version, P2P platforms are prohibited from engaging in quasi-securitization activities, and ceilings on the amount that a single lender may lend through a P2P platform and the aggregate amount that a single lender may lend through all P2P platforms are imposed. Further, local regulators will play an important role in the registration and supervision of P2P platforms. This approach is consistent with the general position that, while enhancing risk control, the regulators would allow certain flexibility to facilitate financial innovation."

"Network service providers who wish to perform public fundraising platform services must be appointed by the MCA. However, the measures do not address the appointment qualifications and procedures. Currently only 13 platform service providers are appointed through the MCA's internal selection. The MCA should consider specifying the qualifications and allowing more platforms to perform the services to ensure a fair competition. The measures are silent on the legal consequences if platform service providers breach any of the provisions. The lack of penalty may impact the services quality of the platforms and the supervision effectiveness by government authorities.

"MOFCOM’s investigation into Didi Chuxing’s acquisition of Uber China may give rise to several interesting points. It may raise the novel issue of how to calculate the turnover of e-commerce platform businesses. This is the threshold question in determining the nature of the investigation, that is, whether the case represents a failure to notify a notifiable transaction or an investigation into a transaction that falls below the filing thresholds. If the latter, it will be the first public case of this kind under Article 4 of the Provisions of the State Council on the Thresholds for the Notification of Concentrations of Undertakings, and it may cause concerns on legal certainty – under what circumstances should parties to a transaction below the filing thresholds notify MOFCOM? In addition, what would be the likely remedies to address the competition concerns? The case also calls into question whether MOFCOM can be influenced by competitors or other third parties when they report transactions they don’t like and push MOFCOM to investigate even if such transactions do not meet the filing thresholds."

"The draft Network Security Law is an important component of a broader program among various arms of the Chinese government to increase network security, parts of which threaten market access for international IT companies and which potentially present challenges to international companies in banking and other sectors, who may find their domestic IT infrastructure regulated as "critical information infrastructure". We had hoped the second draft would clarify the scope of the term "critical information infrastructure" so companies could have a clearer sense of the scope of the related data localization requirement. No such luck. In fact the NPC Standing Committee has kicked the can further down the road by delegating to the State Council not only the job of defining the term but also of stipulating the specific security measures other than the data localization requirement that will apply to key information infrastructure. So uncertainty remains, both for operators of IT infrastructure and for suppliers of IT products and services."

"The measures are part of the government’s overall balancing act with respect to labour relations, whereby enforcement of legal requirements is strengthened while at the same time the legal obligations of employers are slightly lessened. The government’s (and the Chinese Communist Party’s) main concern is to maintain social stability and not undermine economic growth; therefore it is trying to ensure that major abuses of employees' basic rights are minimized while also reducing the economic burden on employers as the rate of economic growth is slowing. By publicly shaming companies, the government is using an additional tool to try to reduce instances of major employer abuses."

"There have been measures governing shareholding by SOE employees in China since the 1990s. The previous measures, however, were either superficially implemented or embedded with potential adverse consequences, such as the loss of state-owned assets. The opinions, learning from its predecessors, were issued with the purpose of aligning the interests of SOEs and their employees. At the same time, measures to protect state-owned assets are also made part of the structure, such as the restriction of eligibility for participation, the 36 months’ lock-up period and the limit for the ratio of employee shareholding. Nevertheless, shareholding by SOEs’ employees requires a set of measures constructed on experience from previous implementation of measures and the Opinions are just a start, though the outcome of the implementation of the opinion will certainly shed light on the proper path of SOEs’ employee shareholding."

"As one of measures to promote judicial transparency, the Chinese courts started to publish judgment documents a few years ago. The new SPC rule standardizes the early practices and specifies the types of court judgments and rulings which should be published online. Under the new provisions, the scope of judicial rulings to be published is also expanded, which will give legal practitioners and academics more insight into court practice, interpretation of laws and precedents on similar cases. It is worth noting that the new rules require anonymous treatment of personal information in order to protect privacy. In general, the new SPC rules will further promote judicial justice and enhance the credibility of the Chinese judiciary. With systematic publications and study of court rulings and judgments, I think case precedents will become more and more important in the practice of law in China."