By Mark Schaub, Feng Xin, Duncan Hwang King & Wood’s Foreign Direct Investment Practice
A. General Devolution to Lower Levels
China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has continued their trend of further delegating approval competency to lower governmental levels. This delegation of approval competency to local authorities will greatly accelerate the approval process for foreign invested pr
Mia Qu/Melody Shi/Nick Wang of King & Wood’s Patents Practice
The third amendment of the Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China (“New Patent Law”) was passed on December 27th 2008, and will come into effect on October 1st 2009. The New Patent Law will impact the legal administration of and court rulings on patents as follows: Continue Reading Impact of the New China Patent Law
Ariel Ye, Dong Ping, and Yang Weiguo of King & Wood’s Cross-border Dispute Resolution Practice
On Monday 23 February 2009, the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris in France heard an urgent application by a team of Chinese lawyers for an injunction to prevent the auction by Christie’s of two controversial ancient Chinese relics. It was not in dispute that the two bronze sculptures, one of a rat’s head and another of a rabbit’s head, had been looted by Anglo-French troops from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing during the Second Opium War in 1860 and had until recently been part of the collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent. The Tribunal nevertheless rejected the application. Subsequently, on Wednesday 25 February 2009, the sculptures were auctioned off for 14 million euros each to then-anonymous telephone bidders. The controversy is ongoing.
Continue Reading China’s Lost Treasures: Retrieval of Looted Cultural Relics
In the year following the entry into effect of the PRC Enterprise Income Tax Law, the Chinese tax authorities have issued several rules clarifying emphasizing the position on withholding tax on China-sourced income of non-resident enterprises. Recently, a new regulation was issued that sets out the procedural rules for withholding income tax, the Provisional Administrative Measures on Withholding Enterprise Income Tax for Non-resident Enterprises, Guoshuifa [2009] No. 3.
Stephen Nelson, Partner & Alice Zhang, Taxation
Continue Reading China Takes Action on Non-resident Enterprises Withholding
Wang Rui, Partner, International Trade
The Chinese legislature created a hybrid from the different approaches adopted by civil and common law jurisdictions through the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China (the “Copyright Law”) and the Regulations on the Implementation of the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China (the“Implementation Regulations”), and produced the twin concepts of “legal entity work” and “occupational work” for assigning rights to works made in the course of an employment relationship. For example, a book written by a group of employees organized by an entertainment company for celebrating the company’s anniversary would likely be considered “legal entity work”, but a piece of music composed by a composer employee (not for specific purposes) is “occupational work”, because in the former case, supervision of the company would be involved but the latter case it would not. Continue Reading Copyright Due Diligence Investigations in China: Legal Entity Work or Occupational Work?
The pass-through tax treatment for partnership enterprises has finally been officially confirmed by the PRC tax authority, via the Circular on the Issues Concerning the Income Tax of the Partners in Partnership Enterprises, Caishui [2008] No. 159, which took effect retroactively as of January 1, 2008. It represents an important first step in the development of Chinese partnership tax law.
Stephen Nelson, Partner, and Alice Zhang, Taxation
Continue Reading PRC Confirms Pass-through as “Allocate First, Then Tax”
Towards year end of 2008, the PRC Government announced the repeal of the tax incentive allowing for the importation of equipment free of duty and VAT for encouraged foreign investment enterprises (FIEs). At the same time, the refund available for VAT paid on domestic equipment purchases was also repealed. This was in conjunction with the reform of the VAT system, discussed in an earlier blog on this site.
The PRC government now has issued two notices grandfathering the old VAT benefits until the middle of this year, one for the imported equipment and one for the domestic equipment.
Stephen Nelson, Partner, & Alice Zhang, Taxation
Continue Reading Import Tax and VAT on Equipment in China: Update
Jing Gang, Partner, and Wang Huapeng – Securities & Capital Markets Group
1.The importance of foreign companies listing in China.
1.1 Permitting and attracting foreign enterprises to list on domestic stock exchanges is the norm on international capital markets.
From a global perspective, major securities exchanges are sparing no effort in attracting foreign enterprises to list, with foreign enterprises well represented on their lists of listed companies.
Continue Reading Listing of foreign enterprises in China: Future Possibilities
Mia Qu, Bessie Ye, Nick Wang of King & Wood’s Intellectual Property Group
As 2009 begins and the economic crisis has hit most major markets globally, the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China (“Supreme Court”) is studying how to adjust judicial policy on intellectual property rights (“IPRs”). The new policies will outline developing trends in the legal protection of IPR in China that may occur this year: Continue Reading 2009: New Trends in China’s Judicial Protection of Intellectual Property Rights
Kalley Chen, Dai Chen and Xu Zifeng King & Wood Mallesons’ Security Group
Australia has had a range of general and sector-specific privacy laws for 20 years. At the Federal level, the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) initially regulated the way in which Commonwealth agencies dealt with the personal information of Australians. The scope of the Privacy Act was expanded to also cover the handling of individuals’ credit information and, more broadly in 2001, to cover all private sector organisations and the way in which they collect, use and disclose personal information. Individual States and Territories of Australia also have specific privacy laws that regulate the way State-based agencies deal with personal information, and laws relating to privacy are also found in a variety of legislative contexts. Continue Reading Privacy Overhaul Imminent for Australia–A Reference to China