Nankai students' report on business environment gains recognition

A report on optimizing China's business environment written by students from Nankai University has been recognized by experts from the National Development and Reform Commission Academy of Macroeconomic Research.

Students who worked on the project, Investigation and Optimization on Chinese Business Environment, accomplished their research under the guidance of Sun Jingyu, an associate professor from the School of Economics, identifying the main factors that restrict the optimization of China's business environment and ways to solve these problems.

The students conducted field surveys of various merchants at the world's largest small commodities market -- the Yiwu Commodities Market in East China's Zhejiang province -- from 2016 to 2019, interviewing more than 4,000 merchants.

Through in-depth investigation, the team found that trading parties in Yiwu are mainly acquaintances of each other, which restricts the expansion of their market scale.

Also, insufficient promotion of online transactions led to the alternation of trading methods. The government and market intermediary organizations such as merchants and trade associations played a limited role in matching transactions and resolving disputes.

In addition, the market's comprehensive service capability was not well-developed enough, which choked off new growth points in trade.

After finishing the report, the project team proposed recommendations for the government, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Federation of Industry and Commerce, and the Chamber of Commerce.

Their recommendations have been adopted by more than ten departments, associations, and chambers of commerce organizations from Tianjin municipality and Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Liaoning, and Gansu provinces.

Zhong Maochu, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC, also promised to convert the report into a proposal to the CPPCC.

The results and their follow-up applications have inspired each member of the team.

"The original intention of the project was to contribute to the improvement of China's business environment. Four years of research have enabled us to truly understand the connotation of Nankai's spirit of 'knowing China and serving China'," said Zhang Haoyue, a student representative of the team.