Karachi: On Wednesday, the European Union and China decided to make an investment agreement that would allow European companies greater access to China’s markets and seek to address what Europe sees as an imbalanced economic partnership.
The deal has been in effect for almost seven years and is expected to take at least another year before it enters into force.
It is part of this new alliance with China, which the EU finds to be a partner as well as a structural competitor.
EU companies will be allowed to operate in different sectors in China, such as private hospitals, airline reservation systems, ground handling, electric cars, telecom cloud services, and the maritime industry.
According to Reuters, a few requirements that firms handle will be lifted as a part of joint ventures with China.
Moreover, China will bar the “forced transfer of technology from foreign companies” while China has vowed to make subsidies more transparent and ban state-owned companies from discriminating against foreign investors.