Protecting foreign investors’ rights must for law-based biz environment

The Supreme People’s Court recently published a guideline document, requiring the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese and foreign parties to be equally protected in accordance with the law, and judicial interpretations that apply to extraterritorial laws, international treaties and international practices to be formulated to optimize China’s litigation jurisdiction mechanism for foreign-related civil and commercial disputes.

To build a unified domestic market, China cannot do without the active participation of foreign investors. Therefore, the supreme court reiterated the principle of equally protecting the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese and foreign parties. It plans to introduce a series of specific judicial measures to create a lawbased business environment nationwide.

To make the judicial system better serve the construction of a unified domestic market, the country must create a law-based business environment of fair competition for all market players. In recent years, China’s judicial system has attached great importance to the protection of foreign investors’ legitimate rights and interests, and dealt with a large number of foreign investors’ rights and interest protection cases, effectively improving the domestic law-based international business environment.

However, there aren’t enough judicial interpretations that apply to extraterritorial laws, international treaties and practices, making judicial organs face practical difficulties when dealing with the disputes involving foreign investors. As a result, China’s judicial protection of foreign investors’ rights and interests is not in line with international standards.

How to equally protect the rights and interests of foreign investors in accordance with the law and give full play to their role in participating in the construction of a unified domestic market is a test of both China’s judicial determination and judicial wisdom.

The internationalization of economic development still remains irreversible and it is an inevitable choice for China to attract foreign investors. The main breakthrough point is to build a law-based international business environment and protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors.

The formulation and implementation of various judicial interpretations concerning foreign affairs, will make equal protection of the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors stronger, and unleash the positive effect of foreign investors participating in the construction of its unified domestic market.