Foreign law firms will see the legal service market open wider and their business grow in China as the country is improving the legal environment, said an official from the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council Saturday.

Liu Changchun, from the Financial and Banking Legal System Department of the State Council office, told a seminar in Beijing that the country will issue new laws and amend present ones to push forward the opening of the legal service market.

China not only works to introduce WTO rules into its domestic laws but also to build a transparent legal framework and checkup on administrative work, Liu said.

"The law on administrative licensing, to take effect in July this year, is one of the efforts, which will not only affect the businesses of the clients of foreign law firms but also themselves," she said.

In the two years since it entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), China has been working to fulfill its commitment on opening the legal service market.

The Chinese government has lifted the ban on foreign law firms setting up another representative office and the limitation on where to set up it since January 2003.

Foreign law firms' offices in China are allowed to develop a long-term clientele with domestic law firms while the requirement for the career history of their chief representatives is also relaxed.

Foreign law firms have set up 129 representative offices in the Chinese mainland, 41 more than the number before China entered the WTO, and 16 are their second offices in China.

"Many Chinese lawyers had worried about the intense competition they would face with foreign counterparts after China's WTO entry but this did not happen in the past two years," said Fu Yang, deputy president of the All China Lawyers Association (ACLA). "Chinese and foreign lawyers have much closer cooperation than before taking their own advantages."

Chinese lawyers got more international business thanks to growing foreign investment post WTO entry and more chances to work abroad with foreign lawyers when more and more Chinese companies financed in the global market, he said.

"As a British lawyer I am pleased to see the opening of Chinese legal service market and hope to see it open wider," said Harold Paisner, president of the Foreign Investment Commission of the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA). "China is a huge market with great challenges and chances for foreign lawyers."

The seminar with the theme of China's admission into the WTO ran from Friday to Saturday, and was jointly sponsored by the ACLA and UIA.

The ACLA was recruited by the UIA in 1990.

(Xinhua News Agency April 18, 2004)