In a recent review of business environment in 22 major Chinese cities, Beijing ranked first with best overall performance. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and other economic experts have praised the efforts made by the Chinese capital in improving business environment.
Since September 2017 when Beijing launched reforms to optimize the business environment, the city has successively formulated and implemented a series of policy measures. Beijing's successes in reforms of approval of construction projects, tax payment procedures, and market supervision, as well as its work to give easy access to the power grid to small enterprises and one-stop services to all enterprises, have been replicated throughout the country.
An enterprise-centric business environment
Beijing introduced a series of policies and measures in close succession to optimize its business environment, including the "Implementation Plan on Reforming and Optimizing the Business Environment" last September; the "9+N" policy and measure system on March 18 to further intensify the reform based on actual needs of the enterprises; and the "Action Plan of Beijing Municipality for Further Optimizing the Business Environment (2018 - 2020)" this year to deepen the reform.
As of October, 131 of the 136 tasks identified in last year's "Implementation Plan" have been completed, and the remaining five are actively being promoted; the "9+N" policy and measure system has now been fully implemented; in the "2018-2020 Action Plan," 85 out of 117 tasks have been completed for this year, and the remaining 32 tasks are expected to be completed by the end of the year.
In addition to the policy reform, Beijing also enacted a number of effective working mechanisms to optimize the business environment. Senior officials of the municipal government visited key enterprises such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Xiaomi to hear feedbacks on the reform, while the Municipal Development and Reform Commission and relevant industry authorities played the supervising role to make sure that all policies and commitments are implemented.
At the same time, Beijing also established a unified enterprise project library in the city, and enlisted more than 600 projects with a gross investment of more than 900 billion yuan (about US$139 billion). Key enterprises are granted VIP status as their projects are taken care of with one-on-one service.
Easier administrative procedures both online and offline
To further streamline the administrative procedures for enterprises, the municipal government is promoting the "integrated service counter" project - a one-stop shop for enterprises. According to a relevant person in charge, the municipal service center is progressing steadily with the "integrated service counter" project, and it is expected to be put on trial operation after the New Year's Day in 2019, while some district level administrative services centers (Xicheng, Haidian, Mentougou and Huairou) have already started the trial operation.
To make administrative affairs as easy as online shopping for citizens, the government is actively promoting the "one stop online solution" project. According to a relevant person in charge, it is expected that by the end of the year, 90 percent of the administrative affairs at both municipal and district levels can be processed online.
Beijing also reduced the number of municipal-level examination and approval items from 2,298 to 1,121 - a 51.2 percent reduction. Similarly on the district-level, more than half of the items have been eliminated or consolidated.
Tax relief and talent benefits
Beijing has made significant breakthroughs in optimizing its business environment for startups, providing easy business registration methods and access to the power grid. Registration for start-up businesses now takes only eight days and four administrative procedures, compared to 24 days and seven procedures in the past. Beijing has become one of only two cities in the world where starting a business is completely free. The municipal government also made it easy for small and micro enterprises to get access to the power grid, joining Japan and the United Arab Emirates to become another country in the world where access to the power grid is completely free.
In terms of tax relief, in order to support the development of private enterprises, Beijing announced another 40 billion yuan tax reduction on top of the tax reduction of 40 billion yuan last year.
Beijing also upgraded its level of service to support the talented individuals. By refining the policy measures with regard to permanent residency (hukou) and housing, the municipal government recruited more than 2,300 outstanding scientific and technological innovation talents, granted hukou to the first batch of 6,000 people who won the point-accumulation bid, and provided a total of 82,000 units of affordable rental housing to the talents.
