As a nation-level new area in Southwest China’s Guizhou province, Guian has taken several measures to reform business registration and cut red tape, which were praised by Premier Li Keqiang.

When visiting Guian in 2015, Premier Li said that the new area represents the future of Guizhou, and that it should have a new system, transfer government function and provide better services.

Referring to business registration reform, he said the government should remove “hurdles” for enterprises so that they can run smoothly at the track.

The new area has merged some permits into one, issued online business licenses and set up a special bureau to issue permits, so that companies do not have to bother running to different departments.

Since August 2015, Guian local government has cut more than 100 permits, saving 80 percent in time for enterprises. Approval time for an investment project has been shortened by 85 percent.

Business registration is shortened to five minutes from the former half an hour that it took before the reform.

Now, Guian is working to cut approval time for engineering projects to 3 to 5 days, aiming to be the fastest area in China for engineering approval.

Guian is also enhancing market supervision. It has set up a cloud platform to integrate different supervision items and to make the supervision more transparent.

In the past two years, 9,906 new market entities have been started in the new area, 5.5 times of the number before the reform. High-tech companies have entered, which are expected to produce more than 2.5 million servers and 150 million smart phones by 2020.

“In Guian, I have seen the hope of Guizhou, the hope of West China,” the Premier said.