China to Repeal Regulation Opposed by Foreign Publishers

China resolved a dispute with its principal trading partners Thursday by agreeing to repeal a regulation requiring foreign financial-news services to disclose sales data and other confidential information to a government-controlled Chinese competitor.

The news services will instead be required to share information with an independent regulator, under an agreement by China that resolved a complaint to the World Trade Organization filed in March by the U.S., the European Union and Canada.

Currently, financial-news outlets can't sell data and news articles in China without a license from the China Economic Information Service, a division of the Xinhua news agency. Xinhua is one of China's big three state-owned media groups, along with television and radio broadcasters.

The market in China for financial news and data has grown as the country's financial markets have expanded. Companies operating in China, such as Thomson Reuters, a division of Canada's Thomson Corp., Bloomberg LP and Dow Jones & Co., a unit of News Corp., of the U.S., are required to provide data on customers, software and delivery operations to receive the license. Dow Jones is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

The companies argued they shouldn't have to share contract details, customer profiles and marketing efforts with a competitor. Xinhua hasn't exercised its authority to shut down or fine any of the companies for noncompliance.

Under the new agreement, which takes effect in June, foreign media companies must apply for a license from an independent regulator that will be prohibited from sharing proprietary information with anyone.

"The independence of the regulator is critical to ensuring a legal environment that is free of damaging potential conflicts of interest," said U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab in a statement. A Xinhua spokesman wasn't immediately available to comment.

Dow Jones, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters all welcomed the change and said they had agreed to share required information with the independent regulator.

Officials in Beijing said the law's intent wasn't to censor, restrict or discriminate against Western media outlets.

Europe and the U.S. have complained about the regulation to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce since it took effect in 2006.

Write to John W. Miller at john.miller@dowjones.com and James T. Areddy at james.areddy@wsj.com