China gearing up for another year of reform

BEIJING -- China unveiled its annual government work report on Thursday, declaring its ambition to deepen reform to start new development engines.

The report, delivered by Premier Li Keqiang at the opening meeting of the national legislature's annual session, introduced a series of critical measures concerning the country's economic reform and opening up.

"We must focus on economic structural reform as we comprehensively deepen reform, making new breakthroughs in areas that can boost development, and strengthening new momentum to drive development," said Li.

The government plans to streamline administration and delegate more powers to lower-level governments, speed up reform in the investment and financing systems, pricing control, the fiscal and tax systems, state-owned enterprises and state capital, and accelerate the implementation of the "go global" strategy while using foreign capital more actively.

According to the report, this year will see central authorities delegate power or cancel the requirement for government review for more items, cancel all non-administrative reviews, and establish regulation over the government review process.

Moreover, requirements for market access will be listed to ensure that the powers and responsibilities of provincial-level governments are clear to the public.

The move is intended to make sure that "anything the law does not authorize is not done, while all duties and functions assigned by law are performed," said the report.

"It goes without saying that powers should not be held without good reason," said Li. "Procedures must be simplified and time frames must be clarified for all items requiring administrative review, and cuts to government power will be made to boost market vitality."

Statistics show that the State Council, China's cabinet, has canceled the requirement of or delegated the power for review on 798 items since 2013, fulfilling this administration's objective ahead of schedule.

Liu Qin, a National People's Congress (NPC) deputy from the rural Anhui province, said she used to make numerous visits to local governments for permits to start a livestock-feeding farm.

"However, the number of government departments we have to go through to get a permit for a small business has been reduced by half since the streamlining of administration and delegating of powers.

Despite noticeable results, some vested-interest groups are still resisting delegating powers, experts said.

"This year's reform goes even further, with a lot of core powers such as fee charging and personnel changes to be delegated, " said Yan Jirong, a professor at Peking University's school of government.

"To crack this hard nut which matters to reform as a whole, efforts are needed to address both sloth in administration and remaining government approval in disguised form," Yan said.

The ambitious reform plan touched another field that has long been criticized and is closely related to people's livelihoods.

According to the government work report, authorities will lift pricing controls over all goods and services that can viably compete in markets.

The government will stop setting prices for most pharmaceuticals and delegate to lower-level governments the power to set prices for certain basic public services, Li vowed.

It plans to improve the pricing of resource products and implement a system of tiered pricing for electricity, water, and natural gas used for household purposes.

"The pricing reform has shown the central government's resolution to target the country's monopolized industries in a bid to build a market-oriented pricing mechanism," said Xu Yaotong with the Chinese Academy of Governance.

The premier also pledged to continue reforming SOEs.

"We will move more swiftly in carrying out trials on establishing state capital investment companies and operating companies, create a market-based platform for state capital operations, and improve their performance," he said.

Steps will be taken to implement the reform of introducing mixed ownership to SOEs, and both encourage and regulate equity investment made by private capital in SOE investment projects.

"Opening up is itself a reform. We must carry out a new round of high-quality opening up, move more swiftly in building a new open economy, and maintain momentum in development and in international competition by pressing ahead with opening up," said Li.