Earlier this month, European and Chinese negotiators reached clear conclusions on the ambitious and comprehensive scope of the upcoming EU-China investment agreement and moved into a phase of specific text-based negotiations. This is a major step forward in the EU-China talks launched at the end of 2013 and a direct response to the political commitment made by European and Chinese leaders at the June 2015 EU-China Summit. The EU and China agreed in particular that the future deal should improve market access opportunities for their investors by establishing a genuine right to invest and by guaranteeing that they will not discriminate against their respective companies. The EU and China are also determined to address key challenges of the regulatory environment, including those related to transparency, licensing and authorization procedures, and to provide for a high and balanced level of protection for investors and their investments. The agreement will also include rules on environmental and labor-related dimensions of foreign investment. The negotiators will continue working intensively throughout 2016 in order to hammer out the details of the agreement, the European Commission said on its web site.

China scored a major victory in its seven-year trade dispute with the European Union after the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled in favor of Chinese fastener makers. The EU decision to impose hefty tariffs on fastener imports from China during the past seven years is illegal, the WTO said in its ruling. China, for its part, will take more concrete steps to protect the rights of its domestic exporters, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said. Chen Fuli, Deputy Director General of the Department of Treaty and Law at the Ministry, said China would forward a trade retaliation request to the WTO to force the EU to remove the anti-dumping duties on Chinese fasteners if the EU does not negotiate terms or remove such an unfair duty after the ruling. Normally it takes up to 15 months for countries to amend rules and withdraw anti-dumping duties after a WTO ruling on trade disputes. China is the world’s biggest producer of screws, nuts, bolts and washers, and the EU is a major destination for its fasteners, which are used in a wide range of products. China shipped USD1 billion worth of fastener products to the EU in 2008, falling to USD80 million by 2014 after the EU decided to impose anti-dumping duties of up to 85% on China’s fasteners for five years in January 2009. On July 31, 2009, China brought the case to the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism, the country’s first such case against the EU. China currently has more than 8,000 fastener enterprises, employing 200,000 people and exporting products worth USD5.24 billion, the China Daily reports.

China plans to open about 20 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) collaboration centers this year in countries and regions covered by the Belt and Road Initiative, according to Wang Xiaopin, Director of the International Cooperation Department at the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. A special fund was set up last last year with primary investment of CNY20 million to finance the centers. About 300,000 Chinese TCM practitioners are working worldwide. The international market for TCM products and services is valued at USD50 billion. More than 10,000 foreigners arrive in China each year to learn TCM. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province are their top destinations. Gao Sihua, former President of the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, said that China still lacks professionals with a good command of both TCM and English.

China received more than one million applications for invention patents in 2015, setting a new record high in annual filings and retaining its No 1 world ranking for the fifth consecutive year, according to the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO). Invention patent applications filed with SIPO increased nearly 20% to more than 1.1 million last year, Gong Yalin, Director of SIPO’s Planning and Development Department, said at a news conference. It was the first time annual filings surpassed the benchmark of one million. In the same year, SIPO granted about 359,000 invention patents, 263,000 of which were filed by domestic applicants, a 61.9% jump or 100,000 more than in 2014, with 60.2% from companies. The average processing period for invention patents was reduced to around 22 months and three months for another two types of patents – industrial designs and utility models. Jiangsu province ranked first in terms of invention patents granted last year, followed by Beijing and Guangdong. In total patent inventory, Guangdong topped the ranking, with Beijing taking second place and Jiangsu, third.

Slower growth in China’s value-added industrial output in 2015 was due to a continued slowdown in traditional heavy industrial sectors, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. An important barometer of overall economic growth, value-added industrial output grew by 6.1% year-on-year, 2.2 percentage points slower than in 2014. The growth is mainly being pushed down by overcapacity in traditional heavy industries. Industrial output in the cement and plate glass industries dropped by 4.9% and 8.6% year-on-year, respectively, according to the NBS. Industrial output has long been a key driver of the nation’s growth, but the growth rate was 0.8 percentage points lower than the GDP growth rate last year. The central government has shown a strong commitment to slashing excess capacity, and zombie factories – those unable to pay their debt and survive without outside support – will face greater challenges to survive this year. While industrial production is contributing less to the world’s No 2 economy, high technology industries are expected to take the lead in the future. The value-added output of the high-tech industry went up by a notable 10.2% year-on-year, 4.1 percentage points faster than the total value-added output, the China Daily reports.