The Chinese government aims to further improve China’s business environment and better serve market entities, according to guidelines issued by the State Council.
The guidelines stress six categories of policies and measures, including more streamlined and efficient approval procedures for construction projects and their financing, easier approval processes and conditions for enterprises generally and an optimized business environment for foreign trade and investment.
It also highlights support for employment and entrepreneurship, improved quality and efficiency of services provided to businesses and a long-term mechanism for business-environment improvement.
Specifically, the guidelines state that the market-entry threshold should be further lowered for the education, medical services and sports sectors, among others, and unreasonable barriers should be removed.
Meanwhile, it stressed the further removal of operational and investment barriers to foreign-invested and foreign-trade firms, such as offering cities at or above prefecture level mandates to register foreign-invested firms.
5G base stations
South China’s Guangdong province has built more than 78,000 5G base stations as of the end of June, according to the provincial government.
In the first half of this year, the province completed the construction of 41,401 stations with the number of 5G users exceeding 14.34 million, said Dong Jin with the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Guangdong province.
The province will continue to beef up the construction of 5G infrastructure, and more efforts will be made to improve indoor 5G networks at places such as commercial buildings, residential areas and industrial parks, said Dong. Guangdong will also promote the use of 5G technology in more areas and industries, he added.
Foreign trade in Guangdong
Total foreign trade in Guangdong province contracted by 7.1% year on year to 3.06 trillion yuan (US$438 billion) in the first half of this year, customs statistics showed.
The decline narrowed by 1.7 percentage points compared with that in the first five months, indicating a gradual trade recovery. The total trade volume of the province in the second quarter surged by 23% quarter on quarter, according to the Guangdong customs.
The export volume dropped 8.5% year on year to 1.82 trillion yuan in the first half, while the import volume fell 5% to 1.24 trillion yuan.
For the same period, trade volume contributed by private companies rose 0.6% to 1.68 trillion yuan, accounting for 54.8% of Guangdong’s total trade. ASEAN remains the largest trading partner of the province, with the trade volume up 6.8% to 470.84 billion yuan.
The export of anti-epidemic materials surged by 1.7 times to 94.15 billion yuan, and imported consumption goods rose by 10.5% to 116.81 billion yuan.
Tianjin port
North China’s Tianjin port ranked first in liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports among the country’s LNG import ports in the first half of this year, according to Tianjin Customs.
LNG imports through the Tianjin port surged 26.1% to 5.95 million tonnes in the first six months of this year from a year ago.
LNG imported through the port during the six-month period mainly came from Australia, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
The sustained growth in LNG imports can be attributed to the optimization of the port’s customs clearance efficiency and its geographical location, a pivotal seaport for northern China.
Company news
Alibaba’s communication app DingTalk said it will invest 100 million yuan in the digitalization of 100 Chinese county-level regions and help build a digital infrastructure for 10,000 villages.
Digital solutions have been rolled out by DingTalk to promote e-government, business services and improve people’s livelihoods in those regions. Digital platforms for rural areas will also be established to enhance grassroots governance.
The story was written by Xu Jiangshan and Liu Licong and first published at ATimesCN.com. It was translated by Nadeem Xu.