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As China’s old economy slumps, service industries from banking to telecommunications are poised to take up the slack. The catch for American and other foreign firms: They’re locked out of these new growth drivers.

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been bullish on China for years, but at a briefing hosted by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday he slammed the country’s handling of market forces as amateurish

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Overseas banks and life insurers have both seen their markets shares slip over the past decade, to 1.7 per cent and 5.6 per cent respectively at the end of 2013, according to Ernst & Young Global Ltd. Foreign ownership of China’s booming telecommunications industry is less than 1 per cent, while law firms from abroad are prohibited from practicing domestic law.

Almost two years after President Xi Jinping championed the biggest market opening in two decades, foreign firms are contemplating a future with marginal access to the new growth engines of the world’s second-biggest economy. Xi meets with President Barack Obama next week during his first state visit to the U.S., with lack of business access adding to tensions that include cybersecurity, the valuation of the yuan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea and East China Sea.