EU business lobby warns stalled reforms driving China pessimism

Looking east: Forty-seven percent of European companies plan to expand their operations in China .

BEIJING: Foreign companies face an "increasingly hostile" environment in China, a European business lobby said on Tuesday, with fewer than half of its members saying they currently plan to expand operations in the world's second-largest economy.

China's failure to deliver on pledges to open market access for foreign companies has triggered a "fresh wave of pessimism", the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China said in its annual members' survey, which had more than 500 respondents.