Zhinews of Shenzhen Satellite TV:

In recent years, the NDRC has taken the lead in establishing a business environment evaluation system, and has carried out multiple rounds of evaluations, covering hundreds of cities across the country. What achievements and progress have been made in China's business environment assessment work? What are the priorities for optimizing the business environment this year? Thank you.

Lian Weiliang:

Mr. Lin Nianxiu, please answer the questions.

Lin Nianxiu:

Establishing a business environment evaluation system that conforms to China's national conditions and conducting business environment evaluation is an institutional arrangement made by the Regulations on Optimizing Business Environment. Since 2018, the NDRC has led the establishment of China's business environment evaluation system in accordance with the deployment of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. So far, six batches of evaluations have been carried out. A total of 98 cities across the country have participated in the evaluations, covering 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. In this process, we have formed three "1+N" working mechanisms in systems, indicators, and reports for optimizing the business environment, which have effectively promoted the optimization and upgrading of business environment nationwide.

Regarding these three "1+N" mechanisms, the first is the system "1+N". "1" is China's "Regulations on Optimizing Business Environment", and "N" is the supporting regulations and policies issued by various regions. For the indicator "1+N", "1" is the evaluation indicator system of China's business environment, including 18 major items and 87 small items, and "N" is the indexes added by local governments in accordance with local situations. As for the report "1+N" mechanism, "1" is the "China Business Environment Report" issued by the NDRC every year, and "N" is the local self-assessment reports. Each region has carried out targeted reforms in line with the national indicator system. At present, 28 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have formulated local regulations. Many cities' plans for optimizing business environment have been upgraded from version 1.0 to version 5.0, while all regions are showing enormous enthusiasm to compete with each other to optimize their business environment.

You all know that business environment is the soil for the survival and development of enterprises, and the quality of the "soil" is directly related to the vitality of market entities and the driving force of economic development. The NDRC will conscientiously implement the deployment of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, focus on key points, continue to make efforts, and strive to create a market-oriented, law-based, internationalized, and convenient top-class business environment to better cultivate and stimulate the vitality of market players. To sum up, the next key measures can be summarized in five words, namely, "fairness, justice, openness, convenience, and satisfaction."

Fairness means continuing to relax market access, allowing enterprises to enter and compete on an equal footing. We will focus on implementing list-based management and fully implement administrative systems such as the negative list for market access and the list of items requiring administrative licensing. The most urgent task is to speed up the removal of hidden barriers in the market, break down the "glass door", clean up and abolish regulations and practices that hinder a unified market and fair competition, and ensure that various market players can equally use various production factors and public service resources in accordance with the law.

Justice means implementing scientific and effective supervision, enhancing corporate investment confidence, and stabilizing market expectations. We will focus on promoting the "three meticulous implementations." The first is to meticulously implement the "Regulations on Optimizing Business Environment" and solve the "last-mile" problems in the implementation of laws and regulations. The second is to meticulously implement supervision system rules, strictly regulate administrative law enforcement, and implement "double randoms, one disclosure" supervision (i.e. randomly select inspection objects and inspectors, and disclose the results timely), credit supervision, smart supervision, remote supervision, and mobile supervision. The third is to meticulously implement the regulations and procedures for formulating enterprise-related policies, allowing entrepreneurs to actively participate in policy formulation so that policy measures are more grounded, operational, and effective.

Openness means treating domestic and foreign enterprises equally and promoting the stable development of foreign investment and foreign trade. On the one hand, we will focus on the implementation of the Foreign Investment Law and supporting regulations, implement the catalog of industries that encourage foreign investment, and promote the implementation of major foreign investment projects. On the other hand, we will intensify our efforts to serve and guarantee foreign-funded enterprises and make every effort to coordinate and resolve the reasonable demands of foreign-funded enterprises so as to make China an attractive investment destination in the long run.

Convenience means improving the quality and efficiency of government services and making it more convenient and efficient for enterprises and the people to proceed with their businesses there. The emphasis is on "three pushes". The first is to push forward the quality and efficiency of window services, enhance the "one-stop" service function at government service halls, and promote the integrated handling of more government affairs. The second is to push forward the deep integration of online and offline services, and strengthen the coordination between the physical government service hall and the online government service platform, so as to facilitate enterprises and the people to handle their procedures there. The third is to push forward the optimization of the technology empowerment process, develop more digital service scenarios, and realize a broader range of online and cross-province one-stop services.

Satisfaction means playing the role of evaluation in guidance and supervision, stimulating local governments to introduce stronger and more practical measures recognized by market entities. Whether the business environment is good enough should be judged by enterprises. We will continue to improve the evaluation mechanism that focuses on the satisfaction of market players and the public, promote the evaluation of China's business environment in an orderly manner, guide and support more cities to make up for their shortcomings and weaknesses in line with advanced practices, and actively carry out reforms and innovations. For example, we will introduce a new measure to establish a "collection and notification system for cases that damage business environment." We will collect the problems that damage the business environment in different places and take the collected problems and rectification progress as an important part of China's business environment evaluation so as to promote solutions one by one. Thank you.

Market News International:

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues to escalate, and international oil and gas prices continue to rise further. Does China have any plans to ensure the supply of energy? Will you consider increasing imports? What are the appropriate import channels that China can utilize? Thank you.

Lian Weiliang:

Thank you for your questions. The recent escalation of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has had an impact on the global energy market, and international crude oil and natural gas prices have risen greatly. Due to the high proportion of China's crude oil and natural gas being from outside its border, we will definitely be affected, and the import cost will rise. But overall, the impact is controllable. This is because, on the one hand, China is a big energy consumer and also a big energy producer, so the overall energy supply is guaranteed. The sources of China's crude oil and natural gas imports have been diversified, and long-term contracts account for a high proportion. As long as all parties comply with the contracts, imports can remain generally stable. At the same time, China is vigorously promoting the high-quality development of renewable energy and accelerating the implementation of renewable energy substitution. The rapid increase in clean energy will also effectively hedge and mitigate external impacts. In the past year, the proportion of clean energy in our total energy consumption has increased by 1.2 percentage points; in the national power generation in the past year, the proportion of power generation from wind power and photovoltaics increased by 2.2 percentage points. In addition, our current CPI is at a low level. Just now, Mr. Hu Zucai introduced the situation. We will take comprehensive measures to alleviate the impact of imported inflation.

As for how to ensure energy security and stabilize supply, we will make efforts in the following four aspects, as I mentioned just now. This includes expanding production capacity, increasing energy reserve, ensuring supply and stabilizing prices, and resolutely working to meet people's basic living needs of energy. These measures center on two keywords, namely "increasing" and "stabilizing." We need to increase the capacity and volume of production, the reserve, and the supply of energy. In the meantime, we also need to stabilize energy imports, prices, and relevant expectations. With the implementation of these measures, we have the confidence to ensure energy security and reliable supply, and meanwhile promote the green and low-carbon transformation of energy in an orderly manner.

Thank you.