The Chinese government says it will increase its efforts to create jobs and new revenue channels for farmers through cultivating entrepreneurship and innovation and developing new driving forces for development in rural areas.
Premier Li Keqiang issued the instruction during the 5th Conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation with New Farmers and Business Forms in Nanjing, East China’s Jiangsu province on Thursday.
Entrepreneurship and innovation are essential to create more jobs and increase farmers’ incomes in rural areas, Li said. In recent years, entrepreneurship and innovation have been thriving in rural areas, bringing a large array of new business forms to an expanding population of new farmers, he added.
Li said the trend is playing a significant role in alleviating poverty and building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. He called for administrative reform and more favorable policies and guidance services to better support mass entrepreneurship and innovation.
Banking, insurance, brokerage sectors
Financial regulators have recently approved several offshore financial institutions to set up new business entities in China as the country continues to open up its financial sector to foreign investors.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) gave Singapore-based DBS Group the green light on August 27 to set up DBS Securities (China) Ltd, a joint-venture securities company in which DBS Group will have a controlling stake.
With the aim of providing onshore products and services for domestic and foreign clients, DBS Securities will engage in activities including brokerage services, securities investment consulting, securities underwriting and sponsorship, as well as proprietary trading.
On the same day, the CSRC granted a domestic fund custodian license to Citibank (China) Co Ltd, which became the first United States bank and the first of the top five global custodians to win such a license. The license will enable Citi to provide custodial services for mutual funds and private funds domiciled in China after passing CSRC’s on-site inspection this year.
Last month, the CSRC also approved BlackRock Financial Management Inc, a New York-based investment management firm, to establish a wholly-owned mutual fund management company in China. The new Shanghai-based company has a registered capital of 300 million yuan ($44 million). Its business scope includes mutual fund management, fund sales and handling private assets.
The announcement came after BlackRock, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and China Construction Bank Corp received approval from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission to set up a foreign-controlled wealth management joint venture in China.
Financial reforms
Chinese regulators are determined to accelerate financial opening-up amid attempts to boost the value of yuan-denominated assets and attract offshore funds by removing long-existing cross-border funding obstacles.
As the country’s top-level policymakers have proposed a new development pattern featuring “dual circulation” — which takes the domestic market as its mainstay, with domestic and foreign markets connecting and supporting each other — financial opening-up and structural reforms will be further promoted to support the development strategy, experts said.
Regulators recently targeted a further opening of China’s 109 trillion yuan (US$16 trillion) bond market, the world’s second largest.
Earlier this month, the central bank and the regulators of the securities and foreign exchange sectors jointly issued a set of new rules that allow foreign institutional investors to directly enter the onshore bond exchange market, or invest through Bond Connect programs.
It marks the first time that foreign investors are able to purchase exchange-traded bonds in China. Previously, regulators only approved overseas funds that were injected into the interbank bond market, a reform that began a decade ago.
New entity list
China’s Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday that its “unreliable entity list,” which seeks to punish firms, organisations or individuals that threaten the country’s national security, is not targeted at any specific country or company and will be applied in accordance with the rules.
There is no preset list of enterprises in the list and the presence is determined by the behavior of the companies, said Gao Feng, a spokesman for the ministry, adding that the government would carry out its work in a conscientious, legal and prudent manner.
He said China is committed to deepening reform and expanding opening-up, and firmly protecting the legitimate rights and interests of various market players.
Company news
Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, owner of Volvo, launched its electric car-only platform on Wednesday. The Chinese carmaker said it will share the architecture among its nine brands and make it accessible to other carmakers.
The first model to be based on the architecture will be the Lynk & Co Zero Concept, which was unveiled on Wednesday.
The model, having a range of over 700 kilometers and featuring co-pilot functions powered by Mobileye, will go into production and hit the market in 2021.
The stories were written by Xu Jiangshan and first published at ATimesCN.com. They were translated by Nadeem Xu.