China presses forward button of business environment optimization

Sound business environment is like sunshine, water and air for enterprises. In recent years, many places in China have achieved obvious progress in improving their business environment, aiming to offer world-class climate for enterprises.

A technician debugs an automatic production device in a workshop of the Nantong Yuetong CNC Equipment Co., Ltd., Hai’an, east China’s Jiangsu province, May 24, 2021. (People’s Daily Online/ Jiang Ming)

Beijing has enhanced its support for enterprises and improved its all-procedure approval efficiency. Shanghai tailored regulations that suit its own conditions and have built a service system that covers the whole life cycle of enterprises. Guangzhou in south China’s Guangdong province takes how market entities feel as a primary evaluation index of business environment, and has established a multi-dimensional supervising mechanism that is oriented toward the satisfaction of enterprises.

In recent years, China has been taking huge efforts to optimize business environment. It has continuously improved relevant systems and mechanism, significantly expanded market access, advanced fair regulation and perfected government services.

According to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report, China's business environment has raised to the 31st place in the global ranking, up by 47 places from two years ago, making the major economy that saw the most considerable improvement in business environment.

A staff member instructs a man to go through project approval formalities at a government service center in Hukou county, Jiujiang, east China’s Jiangxi province, April 13, 2021. (People’s Daily Online/ Zheng Feihua)

Since 2012, over 10 million market entities have been newly established in China on an annual basis, and around 70 percent of these entities are active. It used to take them averagely 22.9 days to set up a company, and now the figure has been cut to less than four workdays. The constantly improving business environment is playing a very important role in such progress.

Better government services make stronger development impetus. Recently, the State Council issued a guideline making clear that pilot reform steps to improve business environment will be rolled out in six cities, including Beijing; Shanghai; Chongqing; Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province; Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong province.

This move aimed to further improve the energy and development quality of market entities, and will set an example for business environment building in other regions of the country. It is of important significance for better collaboration between the market and the government, stabilizing market expectation and maintaining economic stability.

Whether a country has a sound business environment shall be judged by its market entities. In general, most of the market entities in China have benefited from and are satisfied with the efforts of local authorities to improve business environment.

Chinese and German technicians of a German company in Suzhou, east China’s Jiangsu province install a heat sink, May 25, 2021. (People’s Daily/Hua Xuegen)

To further improve business climate and stimulate the vitality of entities, the guideline issued by the State Council has set major goals in a number of aspects. It includes a list of 101 reform measures, as well as a list of relevant administrative regulations that are to be adjusted in the six pilot cities.

The quality, efficiency and dynamics of the Chinese economy are all going through a reform, while institutional supply has become an important core competitiveness. To pilot reform steps in the six cities will gain more replicable experiences and bring Chinese business environment onto higher levels.

Improvement of the business environment is an on-going process, and there is always room for things to become better. It is believed that by its continuous efforts to improve business environment and stimulate market vitality, China will surely achieve higher-quality development of its economy.