"The business environment can only be better, not the best." From an international perspective, China's business environment construction has not yet been widely and highly recognized on a global scale.

Use greater efforts to create a unified, orderly and fully competitive market environment. Create a fair, just, stable and transparent legal environment with a higher position. Create an open environment with smooth circulation and win-win cooperation with a broader perspective to further enhance the competitiveness of foreign trade.

Zhao Zhongxiu, President of the University of International Business and Economics and Academician of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts

■ Zhao Zhongxiu

The business environment is a comprehensive reflection of the institutional elements and social conditions such as government rule of law, ecological humanities, location advantages, and infrastructure involved in economic activities by market entities. The superior business environment is just like sunshine, air and water, providing "hard support" for market entities and also demonstrating the "soft power" of economic development. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized when participating in the deliberation of the Jiangsu delegation at the Second Session of the 14th National People's Congress:"Continue to build a market-oriented, legal and international first-class business environment and create new advantages in a higher-level open economy." Creating a first-class business environment, as an important practice to thoroughly implement Xi Jinping's Economic Thought and Xi Jinping's Thought on the Rule of Law, is not only a powerful way to respond to the current complex international situation, build a high-level socialist market economic system, and stimulate the vitality, creativity and international competitiveness of business entities. Starting the hand is also a key link in promoting high-quality development, achieving Chinese-style modernization, comprehensively promoting the rule of law, and promoting high-level opening up to the outside world. Its strategic significance and practical role are self-evident.

01

The construction of a market-oriented business environment has achieved remarkable results

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, with the deployment of the central government and the positive response of various regions and departments, the construction of a market-oriented business environment in China has achieved remarkable results. In terms of streamlining administration and delegating powers, it issued a work plan for building a national unified large market, cleaned up a series of policies and regulations that hindered fair competition, implemented a negative list system of market access, especially relaxed access measures in Hainan and Shenzhen, and implemented inventory management of administrative license items, and cancelled and delegated thousands of administrative license items. We will carry out the action of "reducing certificates for the convenience of the people", deepen the reform of "separation of certificates and licenses", and reduce the start-up time of enterprises to four working days. In terms of tax reduction and fee reduction, the pilot project of "business operation to increase" has been launched in an all-round way, and the VAT rate has been lowered for many years in a row, ensuring that the tax burden of the whole industry is reduced but not increasing, especially implementing universal tax relief for small and micro enterprises, and lowering the standard of administrative fees and charges. we will reduce administrative fees and charges, and abolish, suspend and waive thousands of administrative fees charged by the central and local governments. In terms of the reform of the commercial system, we should promote the reform of the examination and approval system of engineering construction projects, reduce the examination and approval time of the whole process to 120 working days, deepen the special treatment of outstanding problems in the field of tendering and bidding for engineering construction, and correct the phenomena of ownership discrimination and local protection; deepen the reform of the integration and sharing of public resources trading platforms We will establish a regular communication and exchange mechanism between government and enterprises, carry out special actions to clean up enterprise accounts in arrears, and implement penalties for breach of trust by relying on the national credit information sharing platform.

The construction of the business environment under the rule of law in China will be implemented in a coordinated manner. In terms of improving legislative regulation, from the promulgation of the Civil Code to the revision of the Law on the Promotion of small and medium-sized Enterprises and the Anti-unfair Competition Law, to ensure the equal use of factors of production in all forms of ownership in accordance with the law, and to participate in market competition openly and fairly. The regulations on optimizing the business environment have been implemented, nearly 300 rules and documents that do not comply with the regulations have been repealed or revised by the central government, and local governments have actively carried out regular exploration and practice in the light of the actual situation, and the relevant systems and systems related to the business environment from the central to the local governments have initially taken shape; legislation has been continuously deepened in special areas such as lowering the threshold for market access, boosting the investment enthusiasm of all kinds of enterprises, and improving the system of fair competition. In terms of strengthening judicial protection, we should improve the benchmark system of administrative discretion, correct lax law enforcement, overweight and other behaviors, and carry out high-quality administrative reconsideration and administrative response work to ensure the legitimacy and rationality of administrative decision-making. severely crack down on monopoly and unfair competition, especially against head Internet enterprises to carry out anti-monopoly investigation or punishment, to curb big data killing familiar, forced "one of the two" and other market chaos. In terms of innovative supervision methods, a new supervision mechanism based on "double random and one open" supervision and supplemented by key supervision and credit supervision has been established, and various regions and departments have actively explored the "Internet + supervision" mode. build an "intelligent supervision" and "accurate supervision" system.

China has made steady progress in the construction of an international first-class business environment. In terms of building an open economic system, Hainan Free Trade Port and 21 free trade pilot zones have been set up, and thousands of institutional innovations have been promoted nationwide. The free trade pilot zone plays a role in stabilizing the economy and promoting growth. In 2022, 21 free trade pilot zones achieved a total import and export volume of 7.5 trillion yuan, and actually used foreign capital of 222.52 billion yuan. With less than 4/1000 of the land area, it accounted for 17.8% of the country's imports and exports and 18.1% of foreign investment. Among them, the growth rate of foreign investment actually utilized by high-tech industries is far higher than the national average. In terms of lowering the threshold for entry for foreign investment, we will promote the legalization of foreign investment, promulgate and implement laws and regulations on foreign investment, and implement the system of national treatment plus negative list before access to foreign investment. we will carry out the work of "establishing and abolishing" more than 500 regulations, rules and regulatory documents in related fields, improve the reserve and service mechanism for foreign-funded projects, and launch the seventh batch of major landmark foreign-funded projects. In line with international and regional practice, we should build a business environment system synchronized with the international business environment, narrow the gap with the international first-class business environment, carry out pilot projects for business environment innovation, and take the initiative in reducing access, cutting costs, strengthening protection, and increasing convenience; build a "single window" for international trade and cover all ports in the country; and newly sign or upgrade more than a dozen bilateral multilateral trade and investment agreements, including RCEP.

02

Persevere in building a first-class business environment

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that "the business environment can only be better, not the best." From an international perspective, China's business environment construction has not yet been widely and highly recognized on a global scale. China's current business environment ranks 31st in the world. Compared with the world-class business environment, there is still a certain gap. From a domestic perspective, as a developing country, China still faces multiple challenges in the process of improving its business environment, such as reducing administrative approvals, improving the legal environment, and strengthening intellectual property protection. There are significant differences in the construction of business environments between cities, which are not completely consistent with geographical endowments or administrative levels, and show obvious hierarchical and unbalanced characteristics.