Foreign law firms will see the legal service market open wider
and their business grow in China as the country is improving the
legal environment, said an official from the Legislative Affairs
Office of the State Council Saturday.
Liu Changchun, from the Financial and Banking Legal System
Department of the State Council office, told a seminar in Beijing
that the country will issue new laws and amend present ones to push
forward the opening of the legal service market.
China not only works to introduce WTO rules into its domestic laws but
also to build a transparent legal framework and checkup on
administrative work, Liu said.
"The law on administrative licensing, to take effect in July
this year, is one of the efforts, which will not only affect the
businesses of the clients of foreign law firms but also
themselves," she said.
In the two years since it entered the World Trade Organization
(WTO), China has been working to fulfill its commitment on opening
the legal service market.
The Chinese government has lifted the ban on foreign law firms
setting up another representative office and the limitation on
where to set up it since January 2003.
Foreign law firms' offices in China are allowed to develop a
long-term clientele with domestic law firms while the requirement
for the career history of their chief representatives is also
relaxed.
Foreign law firms have set up 129 representative offices in the
Chinese mainland, 41 more than the number before China entered the
WTO, and 16 are their second offices in China.
"Many Chinese lawyers had worried about the intense competition
they would face with foreign counterparts after China's WTO entry
but this did not happen in the past two years," said Fu Yang,
deputy president of the All China Lawyers Association (ACLA).
"Chinese and foreign lawyers have much closer cooperation than
before taking their own advantages."
Chinese lawyers got more international business thanks to
growing foreign investment post WTO entry and more chances to work
abroad with foreign lawyers when more and more Chinese companies
financed in the global market, he said.
"As a British lawyer I am pleased to see the opening of Chinese
legal service market and hope to see it open wider," said Harold
Paisner, president of the Foreign Investment Commission of the
Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA). "China is a huge market
with great challenges and chances for foreign lawyers."
The seminar with the theme of China's admission into the WTO ran
from Friday to Saturday, and was jointly sponsored by the ACLA and
UIA.
The ACLA was recruited by the UIA in 1990.
(Xinhua News Agency April 18, 2004)