A joint venture (in the form of a limited liability company) established between a Chinese company, enterprise or organisation and a foreign company, enterprise, organisation or individual in China under the Sino-Foreign Equity Joint Venture Enterprise Law 2016 (2016 EJV Law), which was repealed by China's Foreign Investment Law 2019 (2019 FIL) from 1 January 2020.

Before the 2019 FIL, China used to adopt a bifurcated corporate governance administration approach for foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) (including EJVs) and Chinese domestic companies.

Existing EJVs established before 1 January 2020 may retain their corporate governance forms for a period of five years up to 31 December 2024, but should use this grandfathering period to amend their articles and restructure their corporate governance forms to comply with the Chinese corporate and business law regime that currently applies to domestic entities. For more information, see Practice note, Chinese foreign investment law: overview: Corporate governance.

From 1 January 2020, no new entities can be formed under the "hat" of an EJV as the 2016 EJV Law has been repealed. However, investors can still achieve similar equity joint venture arrangements in accordance with China's Company Law 2018.