Premier Li Keqiang urged further promoting administrative reform for new progress and improving business environment to motivate market vitality.

He made the remarks at a national teleconference on deepening administrative reform and optimizing the business environment on Sept 11.

Deepening administrative reform and optimizing the business environment is the key to stimulating vitality of market entities and driving forces of development, Premier Li said.

The administrative reform in recent years has brought sharp increase in market entities and jobs, booming mass entrepreneurship and innovation, and fast-growing new business models, which played an important role in fighting against COVID-19 and promoting economic recovery and growth, he said.

As China is faced with unprecedented challenges, efforts should be made to promote coordinated epidemic control and social and economic development, the macro policies should be put in place, and the administrative reform deepened.

These moves can help enterprises overcome difficulties and stimulate the market vitality, to steady the economic fundamentals and complete the goals and tasks of development for this year, Premier Li said.

Harnessing that reform to implement macro policies in a more timely and targeted manner proves to be an important move this year in innovating macro-regulation, Premier Li said.

He urged channeling fiscal funds directly to where they are needed and ensuring tax and fee cuts can truly pan out, to help safeguard employment, people’s livelihoods and market entities.

Creative ways to offer credit services should be explored, thereby offering enterprises, especially micro, small and medium-sized ones, easier access to financing on more favorable terms, the Premier said.

Efforts should be made to eliminate unreasonable barriers to employment, emerging occupations in particular, and support flexible jobs in the light of local conditions, he said.

A deeper reform requires unleashing vitality and creativity, and it means further lowering the market entry threshold and advancing the business license and operation permit separation, Premier Li said.

It also involves canceling overlapped and unnecessary approval procedures at a faster pace, as well as introducing a commitment system for production permission, project investment and some certifications, he added.

Fairness and quality should also be a part of the reform, the Premier said, with a shift to stringent supervision, alongside improvements in, for instance, the “internet+” regulation model.

Strictness is required for regulating all market entities manufacturing vaccines and drugs, among others, across whole-process links, Premier Li said.

The Premier urged innovating prudential regulations with inclusion, and giving a bigger boost to emerging industries.

Services should be more convenient and deliver greater benefits, he said, by removing face-to-face processing and realizing unified process to more affairs across provinces.

The application should basically cover common problems by the end of next year, with attention paid to data security and privacy protection, he noted.

To enable people with difficulties to get policy support whenever they need it, the Premier called for building a mechanism to spot them.

Competitiveness in business environment also indicates a country’s global competence, thus the foreign investment law and relevant regulations, as well as the negative list for foreign investment access should be well implemented, the Premier said.

Meanwhile, it is necessary to respond to concerns of foreign investors, and create a better and more open environment to reassure and benefit them, he said.

Premier Li said all regions and departments should enhance coordination to break barriers among departments and local protectionism, achieving more results in reform to serve enterprises, the people, and social and economic development.

The conference was presided over by Vice-Premier Han Zheng, and attended by Vice-Premiers Sun Chunlan, Hu Chunhua and Liu He, and State Councilors Wang Yong, Xiao Jie and Zhao Kezhi.