Economic Daily:

General Secretary Xi Jinping showed great concern about the business environment when he was working in Zhejiang, and incorporated further harnessing the province's strengths in this regard as a significant content of the "Double-Eight Strategy." Could you introduce the measures Zhejiang has taken to improve its business environment? Thank you.

Yuan Jiajun:

Mr. Zheng will answer this question.

Zheng Shanjie:

Thank you for your question. This is a common concern from the whole society, especially from enterprises and the general public. General Secretary Xi Jinping once said a very vivid analogy, "Investment environment is like air; only fresh air attracts more investment from the outside." We can notice the significance of the business environment from the "air" analogy. Over the years, Zhejiang has attached great importance to the construction of the business environment, and has strived to create a first-class business environment against the highest and most advanced standards, which is based on market principles, governed by law and up to international standards. We follow a philosophy that states that "everyone represents the business environment, and everything is related to the business environment," and work to improve the business environment among the whole province and in an all-round way. Leveraging digital reform and starting with solving real problems, we have carried out redesigning of procedures and systems and developed specific application scenarios that are effective and easy to use. We have required government departments to give priority to market entities and people, providing them with convenient services as much as possible while in accordance with laws and regulations. 

In general, we have strived to achieve "three improvements": making it easier for enterprises to get things done, making it more convenient for the public to get things done, and making government supervision more efficient. First, to make it easier for enterprises to get things done, we have adopted two approaches. One is to provide faster services to enterprises. For instance, we have simplified procedures for starting up a business. Now, it only takes one working day on one single website at zero cost to complete all the procedures for starting up a business. The proportion of businesses completing their start-up procedures online has reached 98.4% in the province. I want to present some data here: by the end of March, Zhejiang has 8.16 million various market entities, among which 3 million are enterprises and 5 million self-employed individuals. Considering Zhejiang's permanent resident population, this means one out of eight people in Zhejiang is a business owner. Data from the first quarter of this year shows that the number of business registrations has been more than twice that of business cancellations, and the number of self-employment registrations also greatly exceeds that of cancellations. This shows that the vitality of enterprises has been further boosted, and it is increasingly easy for enterprises to get things done. The other approach is to provide more targeted services to enterprises. After the outbreak of the epidemic last year, a series of preferential policies were introduced for enterprises at the national, provincial, city, and county levels. In order to accurately and quickly put these policies in place, we have developed "enterprise code" for enterprises to submit their demands online and have their demands handled in a closed loop. Up until now, accumulatively, nearly 3 million enterprises have applied for the "enterprise code," and policy-based funds of nearly 20 billion yuan have been made available, not including funds for reducing enterprises' cost and burden and subsidies directly given to cities and enterprises to directly benefit enterprises and people.

Second, it's more convenient for the public to get things done. We have worked from the needs of the public and turned what they wanted into what government departments should provide. As such, we have integrated services that were previously scattered across multiple departments into one single service as seen by the public. I will give you two examples, both of which involve frequently needed services by the public. The first relates to vehicle inspection services. In the past, vehicle inspection was an annoying errand for the public with long lines, poor environment, and cumbersome procedures. People's calls for an improvement were very high. After our reform, vehicle owners can now leave their vehicles to inspection station staff members to complete the whole inspection process. Vehicle owners do not have to come back to pay for the service, get a new certificate and pick up their vehicles until the inspection is completed. Besides, the time needed for inspection has been shortened from 90 minutes to approximately 30 minutes. The second example relates to newborn babies. As everyone knows, there are many certificates to apply for and procedures to complete when a baby is born. Through reform we have integrated several services previous offered at different places, such as public security service, social security service, medical insurance service, and banking service, into one place either at hospitals or administrative service centers so that people can enjoy one-stop services. The services can also be accessed at the official app for Zhejiang's administrative services. The new measure can benefit more than 400,000 families every year and has been highly welcomed by the public. The two measures above are for enterprises and the public.

Third, government supervision has become more efficient. The government should know its place and not go beyond its responsibilities, on the one hand, and fulfill, instead of avoiding, its responsibilities on the other hand. In other words, the government should refrain from doing what it is not supposed to do and give full play to the role of the market. Meanwhile, the government should not be absent for what it should do. Just as we usually put it, the government should do its jobs well and the market should play its role well. At the same time, we have increased inspections for enterprises with bad credit and reduced inspections for those with good credit and improved operational and post-operational supervision. I would like to introduce to you two innovative new measures: one is the "internet plus law enforcement supervision." We have carried out joint law enforcement to ensure various inspections for one enterprise can be done by multiple agencies at the same time. We also upheld the concept of "not disturbing enterprises when they are faring well and offering help to them when they have difficulties" to minimize disturbance over their operation. The other measure is for regulating the platform economy. Resolutely implementing the major decisions and deployments of the central government and to address monopoly and unfair competition in the platform economy, we have taken the national lead to release twenty instructions for supervising the platform economy. Also, we have established China's first digital supervision system for platform economy and optimized the full, closed-loop supervision system. We have taken a series of comprehensive measures to promote the standard, healthy and sustainable development of the platform economy.

Improvement of the business environment is an on-going process, and there is always room for things to become better. We will continue to pursue the most advanced and highest standards and evaluate and improve our performances from the perspectives of market entities and the people. We will strengthen institutional building and comprehensively improve Zhejiang's business environment with high standards and refined measures to make the province a better place for living and working. Thank you.

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