China’s overseas engineering footprint has swollen with the Belt and Road project pipeline, but Chinese contractors still operate under contract frameworks written elsewhere, the head of state-owned China Chemical Engineering Group warns. Mo Dingge, chairman and party secretary of China Chemical Engineering Group and a delegate to the National People’s Congress, told reporters that widespread reliance on FIDIC and other foreign templates leaves Chinese firms negotiating from the back foot and exposed to lopsided risk allocation, intellectual‑property leakage and compliance pitfalls.
Mo sketches a three‑pronged remedy: craft a bespoke Belt and Road contract template—starting with EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) projects—embed general and project‑specific clauses that reflect international practice while protecting Chinese technical, standard and financing strengths, and reduce the scope for prolonged bargaining. He wants Beijing to align financing instruments with the contract terms, so domestic banks and special funds preferentially use the new template and tie financing conditions to contractual milestones.
Beyond model contracts, Mo proposes practical support structures: a contract support centre to provide interpretation, negotiation assistance and legal counsel for outbound projects, and an expanded arbitration and mediation network to help firms manage cross‑border disputes and safeguard state and corporate assets. The aim, he says, is to raise China’s negotiating voice abroad and to prevent downstream losses that can erode returns and national strategic interests.
Mo’s intervention is not limited to overseas engineering. He is equally concerned with domestic industrial bottlenecks in the push away from conventional plastics. Despite a raft of national “plastic ban” policies, China’s biodegradable materials sector underperforms because of incomplete legal and standards frameworks, weak market supervision, limited technological breakthroughs and constrained upstream‑downstream coordination.
To accelerate the market, Mo urges Beijing to issue a top‑level development plan for biodegradable materials with phased targets, to strengthen laws and penalties, and to manage a dynamic list of banned and restricted items. He calls for a more robust standards and inspection regime that clamps down on pseudo‑degradable products—many of which claim environmental benefits but fail independent tests—and for traceability systems and cross‑department enforcement to prevent regulatory gaps.
On industrial policy, Mo recommends targeted support: special funds to back joint R&D between leading firms and research institutes, tax and credit incentives for raw‑material producers, and scaled promotion of fully biodegradable products such as mulch films and dust‑control nets that can anchor a viable domestic value chain. The proposal dovetails with his wider ambition to build a “Chinese business card” in global chemical engineering—exporting Chinese technology, standards and equipment rather than merely Chinese labor.
The proposals reflect a broader push inside Beijing to translate economic heft into standard‑setting power. If China succeeds in putting a locally drafted contract template and dispute‑resolution architecture at the heart of its outbound projects, it will not only protect its firms from immediate commercial risk but also project soft power by shaping the rules that govern future infrastructure deals. Domestically, meaningful enforcement of biodegradable standards would bolster the credibility of China’s green transition, though success will hinge on administrative coordination and independent verification.