Shenyang is currently a hotbed for foreign investment, particularly in the high-end retail, real estate and manufacturing sectors. When establishing a company or a branch office the State Tax Bureau requires a Certificate of Tenancy to be issued by the Housing Management Bureau. This sounds straightforward enough, however in order to obtain this document a foreign invested enterprise must present the following documents to the Housing Management Bureau:

1. A statement issued by the parent company (in Chinese) indicating that their Shenyang company/branch is entitled to use the outlet that the parent company leased from the landlord. The Housing Management Bureau requires two originals of this document chopped with the stamp of the parent company.
2. A statement issued by the parent company (in Chinese) indicating that the parent company signed the lease contract for its Shenyang entity because the Shenyang entity is not able to sign any contract before the issuance of its business license, and the parent company authorizes the Shenyang branch to apply for the certificate of tenancy. One original, chopped by the parent company, must be provided.

These two similar documents must be submitted separately. As the period between issue of the business license and completion of post-license registrations should not exceed one month (fines may be imposed by the tax bureau if this deadline is not met) it is recommended that investors prepare these documents in advance as the approval procedure and issuance of this Certificate of Tenancy can take time. (more…)

By Andy Scott 

SHANGHAI, Aug. 13 - Hainan Airlines has applied to operate non-stop flights between Beijing and Seattle starting next June authorities at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announced.

Hainan Airlines will become the fourth carrier to operate flights between the mainland and the United States, joining Air China, China Eastern, and China Southern. The propoesed Beijing-Seattle route would be the first non-stop service between the two cities.

The application follows a recent agreement between China and the United States on doubling the number of passenger flights between the two countries by 2012. According to Xinhua, Hainan Airlines, China’s fourth largest carrier, has applied to operate the Beijing-Seattle route using Airbus A330 planes. (more…)

Flights between Shanghai and Beijing just got faster and more reliable, at least that’s the word from five Chinese airline companies who launched an express air service between the two cities yesterday.

Operated by Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan Airlines and Shanghai Airlines, a total of 36 express flights taking off almost every half hour between Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport and Beijing Capital Airport are available.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) is promising a maximum three-hour turnaround from final check-in to baggage claim. According to a CAAC spokesman, the service includes dedicated express check-in, security check, boarding gates and baggage claims at the two airports. (more…)

The Tianjin municipal government has signed and agreement with the Ministry of Information Industry to construct a wireless broadband network in the Binhai New District of Tianjin.

The Binhai district will be a trial location for China’s comprehensive reform of its computer networks according to ChinaTechNews.com. Tianjin’s push to create a wireless city zone has made it one of the most powerful cities in the national wireless sector, attracting the attention of more and more international wireless service provider giants.

According to local media, advanced wireless enterprises including Google are conducting research in Tianjin on laying out wireless networks.

The Tianjin Bonded Zone is seeing a lot of construction these days as the port is dredged and streets leading to the zone are dug up to lay cables and pipelines for telephone, electric and gas facilities to feed the new logistic parks under construction.

By the end of 2007, according to an article in Cargonews Asia, the first batch of six container berths with a draught of 18 meters will be completed at Tianjin’s Dongjiang port. The sixth berths, run by a joint venture of Tianjin Port and PSA of Singapore and costing US$871.5 million, will have a capacity of four million TEUs a year.

The article goes on to say that the current bonded port and zone will become the Dongjiang Free Port and the Tianjin Free Trade Zone, according to a blueprint drawn up by the Tianjin municipal authority.

The current Tianjin registered an annual growth of 30 percent since it began operation in 1991, making it the top bonded zone in the country for four years in a row in terms of foreign investment as well as input of fixed assets. The zone’s GDP grew 34.7 percent in the first five months of this year with imports and exports rising nearly 30 percent to US$12.2 billion. (more…)

Beijing Capital International Airport is set to expand its take-off and landing capacity by 50 percent in October when it begins trial operations of its third runway.

The RMB200 million runway will raise capacity at the airport from 30 to 90 flights per day according to the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC). The runway will be 3,800 meters long and able to handle Airbus 380, currently the world’s largest commercial airliner a statement on the CAAC website said. (more…)

Provincial tax authorities recently announced an amendment to the regulations that govern tax free contributions to basic pension funds, basic medical insurance, unemployment and housing funds (Cai Shui (2006) Circular 10). Effective July 1, 2007, provincial supervision bureaus have put in place new regulations on housing fund contributions for Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

When it was issued last year, Cai Shui (2006) Circular 10 set a cap on the basic housing fund contributions actually made by the employer and employee that can be exempted from PRC Individual Income Tax (IIT). This is 12 percent - for the employer and employee contributions respectively - of an individual’s average monthly salary of the prior year, of the given location of the employee’s place of work, which is further capped at three times the city average salary of the previous year. The regulations also stated that employee contributions to the fund would be treated as deductible for PRC IIT purposes. For the basic housing fund, any part of contributions made in excess of the statutory limits specified is treated as normal salary and must be treated as subject to PRC IIT. 

The new housing fund requirements are as follows: (more…)

There will be no more Frappaccinos or lattés in the Forbidden City as Starbucks closed down its controversial outlet situated inside the former imperial palace on Friday. The closure brought an end to a seven-year presence that sparked controversy and protests that the image and cultural heritage of the historical site was being trampled on by the American corporation.

In the end it was not the petitioning of cultural commentators or declining sales which led to the store’s demise, but the company rejecting an offer to combine their outlet with other shops in the former Imperial Palace. This move would have forced Starbucks to sell their beverages under the palace’s brand name, a common practice in national parks in many western countries. (more…)

Beijing will take one million cars off the city’s streets for two weeks in August to rehearse traffic control measures for next year’s Olympic Games, organizers of the event have said.

Sources with the Beijing organizing committee for the Olympic Games said that city authorities will clear Beijing’s roads between August 7 and 20. They said the city government had endorsed the plan at an internal meeting, but refused to give details according to Xinhua.

“The plan has been drawn up and is ready to go,” said Fan Yinlong, a city government spokesman. The two-week period roughly coincides with the time that the Games will be held next year, from August 8-24. According to the Agence France-Presse, Beijing will also host 11 Olympic test events during the test-run period, including cycling road races, wrestling, hockey and beach volleyball. The city has already spent around US$15 billion on a massive pollution clean-up in the run up to the Olympics, which has included moving heavily polluting industrial factories out of the city. (more…)

A letter from Dalian: Chris Devonshire-Ellis

Dalian, China’s third largest port and hometown of Chinese Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, is a city of six million, just across the Yellow Sea from Japan. In fact its proximity to Japan is such that it has for a long time been considered more a Japanese and Korean city of not much interest to other foreigners. That’s about to change.

Intel’s huge investment in the city (actually about a 45 minute drive further north) – a US$2.5 billion dollar wafer fabrication business – is spearheading what will become a renewed interest in investment into Dalian, and possibly Northeast China as a whole. With Intel’s facility also creating the need for an American International School – not to mention a prestigious village development to house all those US expatriate executives and their wives – Dalian is repositioning itself as a destination for Western FDI par excellence. (more…)