Recently, the State Council held an executive meeting to hear a report on the progress of optimizing the business environment and the next key measures.

On the afternoon of June 14, the State Council Information Office held a regular briefing on the policies of the State Council, introducing the deepening of reform in key areas of business environment, and paying attention together!

Q: What will be done to deepen the reform of key areas of the business environment?

A:

The National Development and Reform Commission, together with relevant departments, will deeply implement the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, focus on the prominent issues reflected by enterprises, accelerate the implementation of targeted policy measures in batches, deepen the reform of key areas of the business environment, further stabilize social expectations, boost development confidence, and stimulate market vitality. Highlight the three 'efforts'.

One is to focus on deepening market-oriented reform and fully ensuring fair competition. We formulated the Regulations on the Review of Fair Competition and the Rules on the Review of Fair Competition in the Field of Tendering and Bidding, carried out a clean-up of policies and measures that hindered the Tongil Market and fair competition, and launched a special rectification of key issues in the field of tendering and bidding. Urge the banking industry to implement the credit plan for small and micro enterprises, and promote the continuous incremental expansion of inclusive small and micro enterprise loans.

The second is to focus on strengthening the support of rule of law and effectively stabilizing enterprise expectations. Improve the top-level design of a legal business environment, and promote the construction of a legal business environment from various aspects such as legislation, law enforcement, judiciary, compliance, and legal popularization. Carry out special clean-up of fines. Accelerate the construction of data intellectual property protection rules and implement the inclusive project of intellectual property public services.

Thirdly, we will focus on improving the level of internationalization and steadily expanding institutional openness. We will promote the construction of a new system for a higher level of Open economy, and promote institutional opening in conditional pilot free trade zones and free trade ports to meet international high standards. Continue to promote and serve foreign investment, and deepen the reform of customs clearance facilitation. Support Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, etc. to create a first-class business environment and drive the overall optimization of the national business environment.

Q: What are the next key tasks to focus on narrowing the gap in business environment between regions?

A:

In recent years, various regions and departments have continuously increased their efforts in reforming key areas of the business environment, promoting the transformation of government functions towards reducing approvals, strengthening supervision, and providing excellent services, and continuously optimizing and improving the business environment. However, due to uneven basic conditions and development conditions, there are differences in the effectiveness of implementing business environment reform measures in different regions, and some places still have phenomena such as "complicated work, difficult inquiries, multi head running, and back and forth running". Next, we will focus on narrowing the gap in the business environment between regions and focus on three areas of work.

One is to promote the acceleration of reform in weak regions.

Guide and supervise the implementation of the "Regulations on Optimizing the Business Environment" in areas where the reform of the business environment is relatively lagging behind, focus on the universal and deep-seated issues reflected by business entities, accelerate the pace of reform, explore differentiated business environment optimization paths, enhance government service awareness and capabilities, and achieve the "last mile" of reform implementation and effectiveness.

The second is to support the benchmarking of key regions with international advanced models and experiments.

Continue to serve and safeguard the major national strategy, accelerate the promotion of the Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area and other areas to create a first-class business environment, improve quality and expand coverage from point to point, and lead and drive the benchmarking and advanced efforts to optimize the business environment.

The third is to encourage local governments to tailor measures to local conditions and strive to create benchmarks in segmented fields.

Fully considering the level of urban development and basic conditions, implementing policies tailored to local conditions and cities, and building more distinctive business environment brands, forming an innovative situation where hundreds of competitors compete for excellence.

Q: What measures has the State Administration for Market Regulation taken in addressing illegal fees charged by enterprises?

A:

The State Administration for Market Regulation has taken multiple measures to comprehensively address the issue of illegal fees and effectively promote the implementation of various preferential policies for fee reduction and burden reduction. Firstly, we will continue to carry out rectification of illegal fees charged by enterprises in key areas. The second is to deploy the rectification and cross inspection of illegal fees related to enterprises this year. Focus on the inspection of government departments and subordinate units, the financial sector, public enterprises and other fields of charge, highlight the implementation of policy dividends, strictly investigate the illegal acts in the fields of administrative approval intermediary service charges, commercial bank mandatory charges, electric power engineering installation charges and other fields, and strive to reduce the cost of enterprise system Prostitution, financing costs and energy use costs. The third is to carry out a "look back" on the rectification of illegal fees related to enterprises.

Q: What has the tax department done to optimize the business environment since the beginning of this year?

A:

One is to improve the implementation of tax and fee policies, and create a tax and business environment that benefits enterprises and reduces burden. We will fully implement the decisions and arrangements made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council to continue and optimize the implementation of partial phased tax and fee preferential policies, ensuring that policy dividends are accurately and directly delivered to business entities. From January to April this year, the country added 468.9 billion yuan in tax reductions and deferred tax refunds.

The second is to accelerate the intelligent handling of taxes and fees, and create a convenient and efficient tax business environment. Expand the scope of non-contact matters and pilot functions such as "intelligent pre filling" for value-added tax retention and refund, and "free filling" for export tax refund. At present, 96% of tax and fee matters and 99% of tax declarations can be processed online. The business volume of "online" and "handheld" social security payments in China accounts for over 95%.

The third is to improve the efficiency of tax law enforcement and create a fair and predictable tax business environment.

Q: How to promote high-level opening-up and enhance the level of trade and investment liberalization and facilitation?

A:

On January 1st of this year, the new version of the "Catalogue of Industries Encouraging Foreign Investment" was officially implemented, adding 239 new encouraged items, reaching a new high in history. The industries and fields that encourage foreign investment are further expanded. In the next step, we will fully integrate the international high standard market rule system, promote the construction of a new system of a higher level Open economy, and steadily expand the institutional openness of rules, regulations, management, standards, etc.

·Introduce greater efforts to attract investment policies. On the basis of existing policies, we will study and introduce policies and measures to attract more foreign investment, optimize a fair competition environment, facilitate the flow of innovative factors, and promote practical cooperation between domestic and foreign enterprises.

·Reasonably reduce the negative list of foreign investment access. Based on the evaluation of the implementation effect of the negative list of foreign investment access in recent years, we will deeply understand the demands of local governments and foreign-funded enterprises to expand foreign investment market access, and study measures such as reducing the negative list of foreign investment access in Hainan Free Trade Port.

·Further promote and provide services for foreign investment. Continuing to hold a series of international industrial investment cooperation activities, providing a platform for multinational corporations to invest in China and attract local investment, improving the direct contact point mechanism for foreign-funded enterprises, unblocking communication channels, timely coordinating and solving problems and reasonable demands reported by enterprises, and providing convenience for enterprise investment and production and operation.

Q: What are the new measures taken by customs in serving the innovative development of foreign trade?

A:

On June 12th, the General Administration of Customs launched 16 measures to optimize the business environment within the scope of customs responsibilities, among which the measures for innovative development of service foreign trade are mainly reflected in the "three better".

Firstly, better support the sustained and healthy development of new business formats.

Focusing on the needs of enterprises, we will carry out comprehensive reforms in cross-border e-commerce customs supervision in an orderly manner, and enhance the standardization level of cross-border e-commerce online shopping bonded import and export supervision. In response to the pain points of enterprise returns, we will optimize measures for cross-border e-commerce import and export returns, improve and upgrade the functions of the return center warehouse, pilot the cross-border e-commerce online shopping, bonded retail, and import cross customs return model, study and expand the pilot of cross-border e-commerce general export goods cross customs return, and solve the problem of enterprise returns. In addition, we strongly support the development of new forms of bonded maintenance and expand the scope of bonded maintenance business.

Secondly, to better serve the innovative development of processing trade and other related industries.

Innovate the customs supervision mechanism, optimize operational procedures, further promote the facilitation of processing trade, promote the sustained and healthy development of processing trade, and stabilize the industrial chain supply chain. At the same time, we will accelerate the comprehensive reform of the comprehensive bonded zone, study and introduce a new round of measures to support the high-quality development of the comprehensive bonded zone, further improve policies, expand functions, simplify procedures, and optimize services. In addition, it also optimized the supervision of border trade, implemented relevant facilitation customs clearance measures for the processed goods of border trade, and promoted the innovative development of Border trade.

Thirdly, better stimulate the innovation vitality of enterprises.

Firstly, focus on stimulating the growth vitality of "specialized, refined, and innovative" enterprises, and strengthen the cultivation of "specialized, refined, and innovative" enterprise growth. At the same time, we will further expand the scope of application of the proactive disclosure policy, give compliant enterprises a lighter, mitigated or no administrative penalty in accordance with the law, and reduce and remit the payment of Late fee in accordance with the law, so as to provide enterprises with a convenient channel for fault tolerance, error correction and law compliance. Fully leverage the important role of intellectual property customs protection in protecting enterprise innovation, strengthen intellectual property customs protection, and protect the innovative development of law-abiding enterprises.

Chinese government website

June 14, 2023