In July 2021, the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the “Guidelines for the Green Development of Outbound Investment and Cooperation” (the “Guidelines”, 对外投资合作绿色发展工作指引) to promote the green transformation of enterprises and other nine key tasks.

The Guidelines applies to the activities of Chinese enterprises to promote green development in their outbound investment and cooperation and should be consciously observed by enterprises. The Guidelines encourages enterprises to prevent and control ecological risks in accordance with the relevant requirements on the protection of the ecological environment for overseas projects, so as to improve their ecological environment management capacity. The local competent commerce authorities, together with the ecology and environment authorities, shall urge enterprises to take reasonable and necessary measures to reduce or alleviate the adverse impacts on the ecological environment arising from the investment and cooperation in accordance with the requirements of laws and regulations of the host country, and to protect and restore the ecological environment in accordance with the law or international practice. If the host country lacks relevant laws and regulations or relatively high environmental protection standards, the Guidelines advocates the prevailing standards of international organizations or multilateral institutions or Chinese standards in enterprises’ investment and cooperation activities.