Targeted policies can help revitalize Northeast China

In less than 20 days since the beginning of 2025, President Xi Jinping has been to Northeast China twice. He extended warm regards to ordinary people during his tour in Liaoning province on the eve of the Spring Festival, attended the opening ceremony of the 9th Asian Winter Games in Harbin, Heilongjiang on Feb 7, and listened to the work report of Jilin provincial authorities the next day.

The tours, along with his reaffirmation of the importance of revitalizing Northeast China, have underscored the strategic significance of the region in the new era.

While the business environment has seen improvements in recent years, local authorities in the region have to push forward with reforms to enhance the business environment further and reshape the inherent perception of enterprises so as to advance the revitalization of Northeast China in the new era.

First of all, local authorities in the region should adopt new technologies, such as big data and artificial intelligence, to boost reform and promote innovation. For example, they should integrate the administrative service centers at county and district levels. And different departments should collaborate to break down barriers to improve business efficiency.

They also need to boost investment in digital infrastructure and enhance government networks to enable high-speed data transmission and secure data storage including population, legal entities, and spatial geography. This endeavor necessitates intra-departmental cooperation to be more smoothly and efficient.

Besides, the local authorities can also adopt advanced technologies such as big data and AI to analyze the type, size and health of enterprises, with the aim of providing them with customized services, and implement policies in different fields to ensure enterprises enjoy the policy dividends and reduce their operating costs.

There is also a need to optimize the communication platforms between local governments and enterprises to enable the authorities to understand the needs and demands of enterprises in a timely manner, and help the enterprises to address the problems they encounter.

What's more, business activities should be carried out under the purview of law, so that all business entities and individuals can enjoy a fair and just market environment and enjoy efficient services.

While clear boundaries and standards of law enforcement should be set, specific and, if need be, flexible methods should be adopted for law enforcement. For instance, it is crucial to enhance awareness among enterprises that have committed minor offenses about the importance of adhering to laws and regulations, rather than solely imposing administrative penalties. This approach aims to assist them in pursuing their business objectives through legal means. The authorities should refrain from collecting excessive fees and, instead, take specific measures to reduce the overall logistics costs for businesses to ease their burden.

Also, the authorities should eliminate hidden barriers, especially those hindering business, strengthen supervision on the bidding process, and improve the fair competition review system to build a fair and just competition environment. In fact, the authorities should standardize the electronic bidding system by digitalizing it.

A mechanism needs to be improved for information collection, sorting and evaluating, and a credit database established that covers all types of enterprises in the region. The local governments can set unified credit evaluation standards and grade enterprises based on their credit status. Moreover, law-violating enterprises should be punished in accordance with the law, and their market access, financing, and bidding rights need to be restricted to promote fair competition.

Authorities at all levels in Northeast China should take the lead in building an economy based on rule of law, solve existing problems and establish mechanisms to prevent the recurrence of the problems or creation of new problems, and ensure that enterprises fulfill their contracts, so as to improve the governments' credibility. They should also introduce an accountability system, and hold government departments and their employees accountable for their actions if they have caused major losses to enterprises.

The author is director of the Institute for Northeast Full Revitalization at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics.