Inward investment is vital to the economic life of both the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China. By injecting capital from overseas, it generates exports, creates jobs, and brings advanced technology and new management styles. Legal regulations and government policies in this regard are always geared to reflect a balance between encouraging foreign business activities and maintaining certain degrees of control upon them. Based on expertise and experience that history shows, the United Kingdom offers an environment under which foreign investors can benefit from a rather complete legal framework. China today is also an attractive place for overseas capital, as its virtually limitless market is now becoming increasingly open to the world. This thesis is designed to examine the structure and performance of respective legal regulations concerning inward investment in the United Kingdom and China. With a view of gaining enlightenment from each other's experience, the thesis identifies and compares the following aspects which are of close relevance to inward investment issues, including basic structure of investment market, adoption of investment vehicles, roles of financial markets, real estate investment, taxation of investment behaviour, and settlement of disputes by arbitration. It is proposed that the analysis, materials and conclusions of this research may orientate foreign investors to get a deeper understanding about the UK investment market, and equally enable them to target their Chinese business in a more effective way.