State Council unveils guideline to enhance business environment

The State Council, China's Cabinet, recently issued a guideline on rolling out a pilot program to improve the business environment in six cities.

The cities are Beijing; Shanghai; Chongqing; Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang province; and Guangzhou and Shenzhen in Guangdong province.

The move aims to speed up the building of a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment to further facilitate enterprises' business operation.

According to the circular, unreasonable restrictions such as local protectionism should be removed, as well as those hurdles hampering investment and business vitality.

Meanwhile, more transparent and efficient market access and exit mechanism should be built for market entities.

The circular also urged fair competition, adding antitrust and anti-unfair competition enforcement should be strengthened and improved. Various market entities' property rights and other legitimate rights and interests should be lawfully protected.

The circular stressed facilitating project investment and construction, giving more support for market entities' innovation and development and consolidating the whole-process mechanism for compliance oversight.

It also urged further facilitating cross-border trade, promoting paperless operations and optimizing service and management of foreign investment and international talents.