Beijing: Minutes after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang finished speaking, the security scanners barricading entry to the Great Hall of the People were whisked away and the coat racks were dismantled.

Li’s annual press conference for media on Friday was the final act in the great Chinese spectacle that is the National People’s Congress, and the army of attendants that had kept this theatre running for 10 days swiftly hit the exits.

Around 3000 deputies from across China had earlier spilled out onto Tiananmen Square for selfies in front of fluttering red flags. They had voted to pass the centrepiece legislation to emerge from this year’s only session of Parliament – a foreign investment law.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is displayed on a screen during a press conference after the closing session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing’s Great hall of the People on Friday.Credit:AP

If the mood around this year’s NPC was muted compared to the triumphalism of last year’s – last year term limits on the president were removed and government restructured to show clear subservience to the Communist Party – it is because the verdict on this new law will ultimately come from outside this hall, and outside China.

The foreign investment law was rushed from draft to a vote in three months – record time for China – because it is pivotal to the negotiations with the United States to end a bruising trade war.

It was clear in Li’s sober opening speech to the NPC, his “work report”, that China’s economy is slowing and that rising global protectionism (read: punitive US tariffs and President Donald Trump’s America First policy) was worsening the risks for social stability and threatening jobs.

A Chinese national flag flutters near the surveillance cameras in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on Friday. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang denied Beijing tells its companies to spy abroad.Credit:AP

In his final press conference, Li was asked by a reporter from party mouthpiece the People’s Daily what the government was doing about businesses laying off staff, foreign-invested companies relocating overseas, and the shortage of skilled workers.

Any trade deal between the US and China is still weeks away. And it will depend on whether Trump accepts Chinese President Xi Jinping’s argument that reform has been made to level the playing field for foreign investors and protect intellectual property rights in China.

Last-minute revisions to the foreign investment law this week saw criminal penalties introduced for Chinese officials who leak the trade secrets of foreign companies to Chinese companies. The change was welcomed by the US-China Business Council which had previously complained that “forced technology transfer” had been occurring as foreign companies submitted to Chinese inspections and government approval processes for product licences.

Technological cooperation between foreign and Chinese companies must be voluntary, the law states.

The law also stipulates that domestic and foreign companies will be treated as equals in government tenders for products and services. But the European Chamber of Commerce has called for more detail.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang arrive at the opening session of China’s National People’s Congress last week.Credit:AP

Li acknowledged that many of the regulations that will flesh out how the law works will be released in the coming weeks and months.

Xi signed a decree on Friday that brings the law into effect on January 1, 2020. In an editorial on Saturday, China Daily said this was a “historic milestone on the country’s way towards greater openness”. In a “fundamental change”, the law replaces case by case approvals for foreign investment with a policy of pre-access treatment that puts Chinese and foreign companies on an equal footing, plus a “negative list”.

This is the list of the only sectors where foreign investment will remain restricted, and Li said a new, shorter list would be released soon.

Intellectual property laws will be toughened to include punitive compensation for breaches – but this is also yet to come.

The China Daily editorial said the IP law changes will “finally give it the teeth to bite”.

So, the state newspaper argued, “several main clash points in the country’s economic and trade ties with foreign countries” had been addressed.

But really, the verdict will rest with the foreign countries.

For Australia, with an economy tied to China’s, the major takeaway from the NPC was that China will seek to boost jobs through company tax cuts in the manufacturing and construction sectors, and boost infrastructure spending. The latter will likely fuel demand for steel and Australian resources such as iron ore.

For foreign media, there were two highlights to this year’s NPC.

A session on Xinjiang was opened, allowing the world’s cameras to focus on controversial Xinjiang party boss Chen Quangguo, architect of the policy that has seen hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims sent to re-education camps.

He didn’t speak when a line-up of officials was asked by a foreign reporter if these were concentration camps. A Uyghur deputy, Xinjiang governor Shohrat Zakir, said the centres were like “boarding schools”.

And in his press conference Li had second thoughts and decided to answer the burning question that has dominated global media as the Trump administration warns western allies to ban Chinese tech company Huawei from 5G networks: Does China ask its tech companies to spy?

At first Li ignored Bloomberg’s question, but later, while talking about the privacy of individuals, Li spun back to it. “This is not consistent with Chinese law, this is not how China behaves, we did not do that and will not do that in the future,” he said.

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