China to ease procurement rules

China’s Ministry of Finance said it is scrapping certain procurement rules that foreign companies say favored domestic products for government procurement, a significant step toward easing concerns that global companies would be excluded from billions of dollars in contracts.

As part of a broader government initiative to foster ‘indigenous innovation,’ the Finance Ministry had issued a series of regulations in the past several years requiring products bought by the government to have Chinese intellectual property.

Those rules and related ones from other ministries triggered a backlash among foreign companies and became one of the biggest sources of trade friction with the U.S.

In a brief statement posted on its website, the Finance Ministry said that ‘after research,’ it had decided from July 1 to "stop enforcing" three regulations related to the procurement policy. It named the rules—to do with budget, screening and contract management—but didn't otherwise elaborate.

Read more here.