In spite of the various legislative measures taken by the Chinese Government to improve construction quality and procedures related to government project bidding and tendering, there is still significant room for improvement.
While China has agreed to many WTO provisions that will benefit the construction and real estate industries, few industry-specific measures are on the agenda to which would cause an immediate improvement in China's construction sector.
New tendering and bidding regulations have not been widely adopted and lack enforcement power. Many organizations are resisting the implementation of the new tendering and bidding regulations, and as a result, corruption remains a significant problem due to the continued lack of transparency in the current tendering and bidding procedures.
Foreign contractors face severe partnering and bidding restrictions. They are hindered by numerous obscure or unpublished restrictions and procedures that result in costly delays.
Many Chinese contractors routinely subcontract entire projects to other contractors without notifying project owners or representatives. Communication and contract problems ensue, and situations where the contractor actually doing the work has insufficient knowledge of the project requirements, or lacks the compensation needed to perform the work in a professional manner.
