Recently, the General Office of the State Council has issued the Circular on Effectively Promoting and Sharing the Good Reform Initiatives for Improving the Business Environment (the "Circular").
The Circular reads that 13 reform initiatives, including "allowing enterprises to handle business-starting formalities online throughout the process" and "shortening the timeframe for registration of enterprises", will be shared nationwide, while another 23 reform initiatives, including "providing electronic files to enterprises", will be shared as reference across the country. The Circular requires that all regions and departments shall speed up the transformation of the governance philosophy and methods, work hard to promote institutional innovation, streamline the approval process and improve services to facilitate investment and business-starting, conduct impartial regulation to promote fair competition, carry out reforms to cut business-related fees, make every effort to create a favorable environment for development, keep raising the level of government services and boosting efficiency of their work, and establish a unified, open, competitive and orderly modern market system as early as possible. In addition, two accompanying documents, namely the List of Reform Initiatives Adopted by Beijing and Shanghai for Improving Business Environment to be Promoted and Shared Nationwide and the Good Practices Adopted by Beijing Municipality and Shanghai Municipality for Improving Business Environment, are distributed together with the Circular.