Guangzhou announces further measures to strengthen opening-up and facilitate foreign trade and investment

In 2025, Guangzhou is set to implement further measures to facilitate high-level opening up, focusing on opening-up policies, mechanisms, market expansion, and business environment optimization.

In the next year, Guangzhou is committed to leveraging opening-up mechanisms such as the Foreign-Invested Enterprises Roundtable, the task force on foreign investment, and the Foreign Investor Complaint Services, to better coordinate and resolve major issues, bottlenecks, and difficulties faced by relevant enterprises, according to the Guangzhou Municipal Commerce Bureau.

Guangzhou will continue to implement foreign trade promotion measures in areas such as credit insurance, bonded logistics, cross-border e-commerce, product imports, and personnel exchanges. As all restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector have already been lifted, Guangzhou will focus on supporting the use of foreign investment in manufacturing and high-tech industries with a new round of incentives, developing policies for foreign-funded R&D centers, and more.

In 2025, Guangzhou will proactively align with high-standard international economic and trade systems such as the RCEP and CPTPP, further developing the industry alliance on enterprises going global to support enterprises’ international strategies. Guangzhou also plans to introduce a Guangzhou City Plan for Enhancing Customs Clearance Facilitation and continue to advance the construction of smart ports and smart airports, and support the development of the China-Europe Railway Express to facilitate cooperation in the manufacturing sector and foreign trade.

For business environment optimization, a white list of major foreign-funded enterprises will also be formed to enhance the efficiency of foreign investment services, and to accelerate the implementation of expanded opening-up measures in the nine business areas of the national comprehensive service industry openness pilot, namely non-profit medical and elderly care institutions, travel agencies, entertainment venues, commercial performances, telecommunications services, and social surveys, creating a transparent, stable, and predictable institutional environment.

For further expansion into the international market, the mode of "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belts" will be further developed to help enterprises reach out to RCEP markets and emerging nations such as countries in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa.

Specifically, in the medical field, Guangzhou plans to further expand piloting on utilizing foreign investment in the medical sector and accelerate the settlement of wholly foreign-owned hospitals. Foreign-invested enterprises are supported to pioneer trials of human stem cells, gene diagnosis, and treatment application in the Nansha Free Trade Zone.

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