International Law

China Opening Up Health Care For WFOEs

By Dan

As regular readers of this blog know, my favorite five industries for foreign investment in China are education, healthcare, food, cleantech/greentech, and software. Healthcare just got even better.

The Chinese government has made clear for some time that it seeks to improve healthcare in China and it recently took another step in that direction by announcing that foreign companies may now own private hospitals in China outright. In other words, foreign companies need no longer partner via joint ventures in their ownership of healthcare facilities in China; they can now own them on their own as Wholly Foreign Owned Entities (WFOEs or WOFEs).

These foreign-owned private hospitals will be able to formulate their own pricing for services (so long as they do so pursuant to the government's medical pricing policies), be eligible to participate in China's medical insurance system and also be eligible for the same tax exemptions as Chinese private hospitals during the first three years of their operations.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on January 18, 2011 (boomark / email).