Only three months after controversial draft legislation was issued for consultation, a bill has been passed levying foreign businesses as much as £14,000 a year for each non-Chinese member of staff, reports The Daily Telegraph.

The law was introduced on 15 October, and requires employers to pay extra social insurance contributions totalling 37% of the wages paid to non-native workers, with the employees themselves adding another 11% of the value of their wages, although caps are in place to prevent this exceeding 12,500 yuan (£14,000).

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising company WPP, told The Daily Telegraph: “The reason they have made the law, I suppose, it they want more jobs to go to Chinese.”

Xu Yanjun, deputy head of the ministry of human resources’ social security management questions, admitted there were no plans in place to manage collection or distribution of the extra monies.