A Chinese limited liability company that is wholly owned by foreign investor(s), established under the Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise Law 2016 (2016 WFOE Law), which was repealed by China's Foreign Investment Law 2019 (2019 FIL) from 1 January 2020.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 WFOEs) and Chinese domestic companies.

Existing FIEs 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.

However, given that the corporate governance of WFOEs has been mandated to follow the Company Law since 2006, there might not be many changes that WFOEs must undergo in this corporate governance unification exercise. For more information, see Practice note, Chinese foreign investment law: overview: Corporate governance.

From 1 January 2020, no new entities can be formed in accordance with the repealed 2016 WFOE Law. However, investors can continue to conduct wholly foreign-owned investments in China in accordance with the Company Law 2018.