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China is striving to create a better business environment for foreign investment and operations, as well as promoting the resumption of work and production for foreign-invested enterprises, which have played an important role in stabilizing China's foreign trade, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said on Wednesday.

In 2021, the import and export volume of foreign-funded enterprises accounted for 35.9 percent of China's foreign trade. Recent surveys by chambers of commerce in China from several countries revealed that the epidemic in China has had an impact on their production and operations.

Given this, Wang Shouwen, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce, said during a press conference that, when the epidemic emerged two years ago, the State Council set up a special group to address a series of problems encountered by foreign-funded enterprises in terms of visas, production and operations, supply and transportation problems.

By May 31 this year, the ministry had provided more than 1,100 passes for vehicles transporting key materials to foreign-funded enterprises, as well as including relevant foreign firms in the white list for the resumption of work and production, Wang added, noting that in Shanghai, most of the key foreign-funded enterprises have already resumed work and production.

Moreover, the ministry continued to strengthen communication with foreign enterprises and chambers of commerce, listening to their difficulties and opinions via a number of face-to-face or online seminars, in a bid to address their problems.

At present, together with over 10 other departments, MOFCOM is revising the "encouraged industry" catalogue for foreign investment, aiming to expand the scope of industries encouraged, from which foreign enterprises will enjoy a series of benefits if they invest in these industries.

In addition, the ministry is working on guidelines for foreign investment in China, combined with other measures including cleaning up some provisions which do not match the foreign investment law and promoting the development, revision and repeal of more than 500 regulations, in order to provide a better business environment and share the dividends of development with foreign companies.

At the end of last year, China rolled out the 2021 version of China's foreign investment negative list, which further expanded the sectors for foreign investment and promoted the implementation of a large number of big foreign investment projects, Wang added.

Global Times