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BEIJING, Jan. 29-- The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) on Tuesday started reviewing a new draft of the foreign investment law, the latest move to promote the country's opening-up initiative. During the two-day session, members of the top legislature are scheduled to deliberate a new version of the draft law, which has been updated from the first draft submitted to the previous session last month. Once adopted, the unified law will replace three existing laws on Chinese-foreign equity joint ventures, non-equity joint ventures (or contractual joint ventures) and wholly foreign-owned enterprises. By the end of October 2018, a total of nearly 950,000 foreign-funded companies had registered in China, bringing in an accumulated investment of over 2.1 trillion U.S. dollars and performing as major driving forces in China's economic and social development. BETTER PROTECTION To better implement the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2017, the new draft further expanded the article on the system of pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list, said Li Fei, chairman of the NPC Constitution and Law Committee, while presenting the new draft to lawmakers. The draft is also in line with the amendment to the Constitution, which, adopted by the NPC in March, stipulates that China "pursues a mutually beneficial strategy of opening up." | 
