Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA)

Agreement on Trade in Services - New liberalisation measures in the legal services and the testing and certification sectors

To support the development of Hong Kong professional services in the Mainland and promote the cooperation in services sectors between the two places, the Mainland implements the following liberalisation measures in the legal services and the testing and certification sectors starting from 1 March 2019:

• expanding the geographical scope of setting up of Hong Kong and Mainland law firms in the form of partnership association from Guangzhou Municipality, Shenzhen Municipality and Zhuhai Municipality to the entire Mainland; and
• allowing testing organisations in Hong Kong to cooperate with designated Mainland organisations to undertake testing of products for the China Compulsory Certification (CCC) System on all products processed or manufactured in the Mainland that require CCC. These testing organisations have to be accredited by the accreditation body of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (i.e. the Hong Kong Accreditation Service) to be competent in performing testing of the relevant products under the CCC System.

The above measures have been incorporated into Table 1 (pdf format) and Table 2 (pdf format) of Annex 1 to the Agreement on Trade in Services respectively as part of the Mainland's specific commitments on liberalisation of trade in services for Hong Kong.