Research On The Perfection Of China’s National Security Review Procedures For Foreign Investment

Since 2018,major countries and regions in the world have successively introduced or improved their foreign investment security review systems,including the United States and European countries that attract relatively more foreign investment.In 2018,the United States promulgated the "Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act",Germany revised the "Foreign Trade and Payment Act",the European Union promulgated the "Foreign Direct Investment Framework Regulations",and the United Kingdom is now enacting the "National Security and Investment Act." The current revision of foreign investment in European and American countries and regions shows a trend of tightening national security review.The focus of the changes in national security review procedures is to set up special review agencies and expand their powers,introduce compulsory declaration procedures and extend the review period at the same time.It is an internationally accepted practice to conduct security reviews on foreign investment that affects or may affect national security.In 2011,China established a national security review system on foreign investment.The "Foreign Investment Law of the People’s Republic of China"(hereinafter referred to as the "Foreign Investment Law")promulgated on March 15,2019,formally established a national security review system at the legal level.At the end of 2020,the Ministry of Commerce promulgated the "Measures for the Safety Review of Foreign Investment"(hereinafter referred to as the "Measures for Security Review")to provide support for security reviews.While drawing lessons from foreign security reviews,the "Security Review Measures" focused on summarizing China’s security review experience over the past decade,based on national conditions,and aimed to establish a unified national security review system to escort China’s future economic development.Procedural norms provide a guarantee of transparency and fairness for substantive norms.As the procedural norms of the national security review system,the national security review procedure must have clear and definite regulations.Article 35 of the "Foreign Investment Law" only provides vague provisions on national security review,which is obviously not sufficient for practice.There are 23 articles in the "Security Review Measures",The "Security Review Measures" is to establish a security review agency as a working mechanism,increase pretrial consultation procedures,set up a three-stage review process,and expand the main body of review recommendations to promote the operation of the national security system.However,by comparing and studying countries with more developed security review systems,and combining with the needs of China’s future development and practice,the security review procedures stipulated in the "Security Review Measures" need to be further improved.Starting from the problems in the review procedures themselves,by comparing the national security review procedures of the United States and Europe that have the latest developments in,this paper tries to find their commonalities and differences and putting forward specific suggestions to improve China’s review procedures.The paper intends to start from the basic definition of the national security review system and the need to improve the national security review process,and analyze the necessity of foreign investment in the national security review process,and horizontally select the United States,which has a more mature security review process and the latest revision of the security review process,Germany and the United Kingdom as a reference for extraterritorial security review,longitudinally study the current legislation state of China’s national security review system,and analyze the review procedures stipulated in the "Security Review Measures" from three aspects: review agency,basic review procedure,review procedure supervision and relief.The procedure states that China should clarify the nature of the working mechanism and internal supervision,gradually transition the advisory mechanism to an informal consultation mechanism,set up external supervision procedures and clarify review relief,in order to improve the procedures and norms so that they can better serve national security review system.