Recap | Breakfast Roundtable with EU SME Centre

On April 23rd 2024, the EU SME Centre, in partnership with the China-Italy Chamber of Commerce (CICC) and the European Union Chamber of Commerce (EUCCC), organized a breakfast roundtable at Bella Vita Bistro on the Chinese updated regulatory environment and its impact on European SMEs activities. The event saw the participation of almost 30 people, coming especially from SMEs in Europe, such as France, Italy, Poland and Sweden.

Since the lifting of restrictions in early 2023, the Chinese government has released several documents to promote foreign investment in the country. These include, for instance, the State Council's "Opinions on Further Optimizing the Business Environment for Foreign Investment and Increasing the Attraction of Foreign Investment", the State Council's “Action Plan to Solidly Promote High-level Opening-up and Vigorously Attract and Utilize Foreign Investment”, the Cyberspace Administration of China’s “Regulations on Promoting and Regulating the Cross-border Data Flow”.

Although not specifically directed at SMEs, these documents target a few areas which are typical concerns of SMEs, such as access to finance, cross-border movement of capital and data, policy support and subsidies, anti-unfair competition or IP protection.

The event discussed the most recent updates to help SMEs navigate the changing regulatory environment guiding their operations on China’s territory. To do so, initially Alessio Petino, Business Advisor of the EU SME Centre, provided an overview of the recent developments before opening the floor to an open discussion among the participants guided by Liam Jia, EU SME Centre Team Leader.

About EU SME Centre

The EU SME Centre is a European Union initiative that provides a comprehensive range of hands-on support services to European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), getting them ready to do business in China.

In particular, the Centre assists SMEs to establish, develop and maintain commercial activities in the Chinese market, through export and investment, especially at the crucial early stages of their market penetration strategy.