Upon the approval of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, the Decree No. 23 of the National Development and Reform Commission of the People’s Republic of China and the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China was issued on September 8, 2024, officially releasing the full text of the “Special Administrative Measures (Negative List) for the Access of Foreign Investment (2024)”, which will come into effect on November 1, 2024.

Compared to the previous version, the new version reduces the total number of restricted items from 31 to 29, namely, the following two restrictions have been abolished: “for the printing of publications, Chinese investors must have a controlling interest”, and “investing in the application of steaming, stir-frying, moxibustion, calcination and other processing techniques for Chinese herbal medicines, as well as the production of confidential prescription products of proprietary Chinese medicines shall be prohibited”. Consequently, restrictions on the manufacturing sector have been completely removed in the 2024 version of negative list. Furthermore, the 2021 version of the negative list will be repealed at the same time.