Monthly Newsletter

June 2015

SAIC Publishes Catalogue of Registration Matters Subject to Ex-ante Approval

Recently, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce ("SAIC") has promulgated the Circular on Strictly Implementing the Reform of ‘Business License Prior To Operating Permit’ and Strict Limitation of Business Registration Matters Subject to Ex-ante Approval (the "Circular"). As an important measure of the Reform, SAIC has made and published the catalogue of business registration matters subject to ex-ante approval (the "Catalogue").

When making company registration, change, and closing recordation at AIC, only those items that falls in the Catalogue are required to be approved beforehand by authorities concerned, which involve mainly the business of finance, post, publishing, explosion, security and some other special sector, as well as the approval of MOFCOM (foreign investment approval authority) in relation to foreign-invested companies.

The business items not listed in the Catalogue, including those that are subject to ex-ante approvals before the Circular, such as restaurant, food production and distribution, medical devices, training etc., are not required to get relevant permit before AIC registration, instead, they are reformed to ‘Business License Prior To Operating Permit’. Their business licenses will bear remarks of “the items that are subject to approval according to law can be carried out only after such approval is obtained”, and after a company obtains the necessary permit, it shall publish the permit by itself via the Enterprise Information Publication Database so that it is subject to the law-enforcement authorities and the public.

Administrative Provisions on Short Message Services to Come into Force from June 30

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has promulgated the Administrative Provisions on Short Message Services (the "Provisions") for implementation as of June 30, 2015.

The Provisions highlight that short message service providers and short message content providers shall not send commercial short messages to users without the users' consent or request. If a user expressly refuses the receipt of commercial short messages after the consent, the sending shall cease. Besides, short message service providers and short message content providers sending commercial short messages to users shall provide convenient and effective ways for refusing receipt and inform the users thereof, and shall not hinder the users' refusal to receive short messages by any means. The Provisions also stipulate the legal liability the short message service providers and short message content providers in violation of the law shall bear.

State Council Takes Initiatives to Promote PPP Mechanism

The General Office of the State Council has forwarded the Guiding Opinions of the Ministry of Finance, National Development and Reform Commission and People's Bank of China on Promoting the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) Mechanism in the Public Services (the "Opinions").

The Opinions indicate that the Government encourages the adoption of the public-private-partnership (PPP) mechanism for public services including energy, transport, water resource, environmental protection, agriculture, forestry, technology, affordable housing projects, medical treatment, healthcare, retirement, education, and culture, to attract social capital participation. The Government will take initiatives to make use of modes such as transfer-operation-transfer (TOT) and rehabilitate-operate-transfer (ROT), whereby it will transfer the stock public service projects on the financing platform to the PPP projects, attract private capitals to participate in the rehabilitation and operation, and with the consent of creditors, transfer the public debts to non-public debts. In addition, the Opinions encourage eligible project operation entities to raise capitals through the issue of corporate bonds, enterprise bonds, middle-term notes, and directional instruments in the capital market.