On March 4, Chinese President Xi Jinping held a meeting and had joined a panel discussion with political advisors from the China Democratic National Construction Association and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce during the ongoing 4th session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) or China's top political advisory body.

By Xu Xiujun, deputy director of International Politics and Ecomonics Department, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; cartoon drawing by Wang Dongjie

Xi offered a standard definition of new type of government-business relations with sincerity and honesty. Sincerity means that government officials must keep magnanimous exchanges with private enterprises to help them solve practical problems.

Honesty means that government officials need to be aboveboard and ethical to stamp out greed for money. Meanwhile, private entrepreneurs should tell the truth, offer their counsels, and run businesses with law-abiding principles.

Historically, government-business relations had been a sensitive topic of anti-corruption discourse. Some officials and businesspeople have colluded without clear constraints, which had encouraged the growth of official-businessman collusion and abuse of power.

Blocking the hidden links of government-business relations in the past does not infer a complete ban on officials-businesspeople contacts.

Government officials are required to maintain certain levels of contact with entrepreneurs to serve a market economy and satisfy peoples' interests, while promoting local economic development as well.

Therefore, Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that officials-businesspeople contacts should follow a principle of treating each other with respect instead of forming cliques. It is necessary to set boundaries between private and official affairs.

Sincerity and honesty succinctly summarizes the focus of government-business relations. Sincerity highlights the connotation of officials' offering contacts and service for peoples, dismissing many officials' concerns of keeping contacts with businesspeople.

Honesty highlights the bottom line of law, drawing a red line on anti-corruption, which clarifies specifications for officials' actions in strict accordance with the law.

Sincerity and honesty, along with the principle of government-business relations, stand for the progress of political civilization and the purification of a market economy, as well.