The optimization of China’s business environment has been an important task of the Chinese government in recent years, aimed at attracting more investment and production from enterprises and promoting rapid economic development. The Chinese government is committed to optimizing the business environment through a series of policy measures, including advancing reforms in key areas, relaxing market access, and strengthening intellectual property protection. Here are some important developments in China’s business environment:
China’s ranking in the business environment has continuously improved. According to the “2019 Doing Business Report” released by the World Bank, China’s business environment has significantly improved, rising from 78th in 2018 to 46th globally. The World Bank believes that China has made outstanding progress in reforms in seven categories, including starting a business, obtaining construction permits, accessing electricity, paying taxes, and cross-border trade.
Restrictions on foreign investment are constantly being reduced. The Chinese government has implemented a series of policy measures to gradually relax restrictions on foreign investment, promote the growth of foreign investment, and optimize the business environment. Among them, the restrictions on foreign investment have been reduced from 93 to 48, providing more opportunities for foreign-funded enterprises to develop in China.
Over 90% of enterprises acknowledge the improvement of China’s business environment. The “2018 China Business Environment Research Report” released by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Research Institute pointed out that the results of a survey of nearly 4,000 private, state-owned, and foreign-funded enterprises on the business environment showed that over 90% of enterprises believed that China’s business environment was very good or satisfactory in the past three years.
The overall tariff level continues to decrease. In recent years, China has significantly reduced import tariffs on commodities, lowered import tariffs on 187 daily consumer goods, and lowered tariffs on drugs, automobiles, daily consumer goods, and some industrial products four times to a large extent or scope, reducing China’s overall tariff level from 9.8% in 2017 to 7.5%.
Overall, the optimization of China’s business environment has achieved tangible results in recent years, attracting more and more enterprises to invest and produce. In the future, the Chinese government will continue to introduce more policies to optimize the business environment, create a more fair, transparent, convenient, and efficient business environment, and attract more domestic and foreign enterprises to develop in China.
The Chinese government has been actively promoting trade cooperation with Europe. Since the upgrading of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership in 2012, the trade and investment relationship between China and Europe has continued to deepen, with trade volume and investment scale between the two sides steadily increasing.
The Chinese government supports China-EU trade in various ways, including:
Advancing the China-EU Investment Agreement: The Chinese government has reached a comprehensive China-EU investment agreement, which will promote investment cooperation between China and Europe, and enhance investment transparency and predictability.
Expanding market access: The Chinese government has taken a series of measures, including relaxing foreign investment restrictions and encouraging foreign investment, to attract more European companies to invest and do business in China.
Strengthening intellectual property protection: The Chinese government continues to strengthen intellectual property protection, promoting judicial and administrative protection of intellectual property, and cooperating with the EU to enhance international cooperation in intellectual property protection.
Promoting trade facilitation: The Chinese government and the EU strengthen customs cooperation, promote trade facilitation, and accelerate customs clearance and trade procedures.
In summary, the Chinese government has been actively supporting China-EU trade and promoting the development of China-EU economic and trade cooperation through various measures.