China unveils guideline to boost business environment

BEIJING - The State Council issued a guideline Tuesday to further improve China's business environment and better serve market entities.

It stresses 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 guideline states 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.