Contexts
Legal
Translation Equivalents
- Foreign Owned Entity
- Wholly Foreign Owned Entity
Analysis
In Chinese company law, a foreign owned entity is a domestic entity that is owned by foreign persons. This concept occurs only in US national security law to protect critical US infrastructure (see US nuclear regulations).
Correct use of this term in corporate law documents is essential in order to be unambiguous about the characterization of the entity in China. See our Article on the Chinese law concept for more details.
Finance
Translation Equivalents
- Foreign Company
Analysis
In investment analysis, as seen in the phrasing of US securities regulation about companies, the catch-all term for a business of various types that receives investment and carries on a business is a “company” and in this context a “foreign company.” The term entity is instead necessary for use in regulatory and legal analysis as seen in the US IRS rules.
China English
Translation Equivalents
- Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise
Analysis
The primary reason for the existing standardized translation is that the original translation team only had a small library of dictionaries and no internet access or foreign expert access, and thus chose to translate the phrase word-for-word. At the time, economics textbooks were a high priority for translators, and the economics terminology was carried over to law by mistake. Leading legal translation professors in China have more recently questioned whether China’s English standards should instead refer to entitie