At a State Council executive meeting in April, Premier Li Keqiang urged governments at all levels and related departments to further streamline administration and optimize the domestic business environment.

Actually, before the Premier’s instruction, Jiangsu province in East China had taken measures to further carry out the reform of “streamlining administration, improving regulation and services”, and optimize the business environment in the whole province.

Starting in February, Jiangsu province began to evaluate its 96 counties in 13 cities on their implementation of administrative reform and business environment in 2016, according to the ease of doing business index set by the World Bank.

A person in charge from Jiangsu province said that, by taking the World Bank’s index as a reference, key indicators such as “length of time saved for business registration”, “time shortened for project approvals” and “convenience for the public” were set as evaluation standards.

He also said that a third-party institution was authorized to conduct the evaluation, mainly comparing the data collected in Jiangsu with international levels.

On May 26, Premier Li also urged in an instruction that government at all levels should speed up implementation of administrative reform by focusing on tackling key problems found during the process.

The central government has made continuous efforts to deepen administrative reform to optimize the business environment and remove barriers for market entities, which has seen positive results.

China’s ranking in the Doing Business reports issued by the World Bank has moved forward year by year, up 18 positions from 2014. New market entities have continued to show explosive growth, with 5.53 million newly-established companies in 2016, up 24.5 percent year-on-year.

The evaluation system pushed forward by Jiangsu province is a new move in promoting this reform. According to local officials, the provincial government will promote more cities and counties to simplify administrative approvals and improve the market environment.

As Premier Li said, the nation’s biggest resources are human resource and talent. He called for continuous efforts to deepen administrative reform, properly handle the relationship between government and market to remove barriers for enterprises, and unleash market vitality and social creativity.