New paperless online system for foreign projects

Shanghai's market regulators announced on Tuesday that they have launched a fully paperless system which allows foreign investors to go through the application process for projects rapidly and with "zero contact" over the Internet.

Jason Ibrahim Dwi, an Indonesian living in Shanghai for many years, applied to register a management consulting company in Shanghai recently. He has obtained an electronic business license under the system.

He originally planned to establish the new company in late March, but that was disrupted by the COVID-19 resurgence.

"Shanghai will always be an international city, and it's very attractive and very comfortable," he said. "I think it'll keep growing."

In the past, overseas investors who sought to invest and establish companies in Shanghai were required to submit paper applications, such as investor entity qualification notarization and certification materials.

The new system caters to the paperless and online handling demand of overseas investors during the COVID-19 pandemic, breaking the bottleneck of registration services, the Shanghai Administration for Market Regulation said.

The administration said it would expand its services to include the modification and cancellation of foreign-invested companies as well.

Shanghai has kept improving its foreign investment environment. By the end of May, the city had registered 98,000 foreign-invested companies, leading the nation, according to the administration.

Among these, 856 are regional headquarters of multinational corporations.