The State Council has recently distributed the Circular on Launching the Nationwide Reform of "Separating Business Licenses from Operating Permits" (the "Circular").
The Circular states that, from November 10, 2018, the reform in "separating business licenses from operating permits" will be implemented across the whole country through directly cancelling the examination and approval system, replacing the examination and approval system with the record-filing regime, operating the notification and commitment system, or optimizing access services, respectively for the first batch of 106 enterprise-related administrative approval items. Further, the Circular identifies key aspects of this reform, including making clear the ways to carry out the reform, coordinately advancing the reform in "separating business licenses from operating permits" and the reform in "integrating multiple certificates and licenses into one consolidated license", strengthening the in-process and ex-post regulation and expediting the process of information aggregation and sharing. In particular, the Circular provides that, functions of business licenses and of operating permits will be effectively isolated from each other via the reform in "separating business licenses from operating permits", in a bid to enable more market players to start their business shortly after obtaining their business licenses and address the issue of "allowed market access and disallowed business operations". Furthermore, the Circular requires that, all regions and all departments shall file the record for and make public their concrete measures, by November 10, 2018.