China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) has passed a landmark foreign investment law to provide stronger protection, ease restrictions and open Chinese markets to foreign investors.

The law, dated to be effective from January next year, also seeks to boost transparency of foreign investment policies and ensure that foreign-invested enterprises participate in market competition on an equal basis with their Chinese counterparts.

The new law will replace the previous laws on Chinese-foreign equity joint ventures, wholly foreign-owned enterprises and Chinese-foreign contractual joint ventures passed in 1979 and the 1980s.