China rolled out a blueprint for economic reform in November. It constitutes a critical opportunity for the country to transform from the current strained economic model to a robust, dynamic and sustainable one.

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The reform agenda, if well followed through, will have a comparable impact to China's joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 and should open much broader opportunities for both Chinese and American companies, Gilligan said.

"The reform agenda is extremely encouraging, although there's a little bit of a wait-and-see attitude because the implementation of the reform agenda will be decisive on how much progress we all can make together and in what period of time," he said.

Gilligan said the chamber identified four priority areas for substantial and sustainable reforms: investment, intellectual property rights, transparency and engagement, and standards.

Zhang Jianping, a researcher at the Institute for International Economic Research at the National Development and Reform Commission, said China's investment environment, on the whole, kept improving and the country will remain the world's leading investment destination in the medium and long term owing to demand for infrastructure investment from inland provinces, the emerging consumption market, along with the opening of the service sector.

"More foreign investment is shifting into China's service sector, which is less open than developed economies and thus led to complaints from foreign companies in China," Zhang said. "As the government advances the Sino-US bilateral investment treaty talks, and the Shanghai free trade zone" pilot project aims at easing commerce and investment, the complaints will gradually diminish.

The chamber's report said 44 percent of members believed a bilateral investment treaty would have a positive or very positive impact on their business.

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