China plans more steps to aid smaller companies

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology

"We aim to nurture 600 SMEs who have strong innovation capacities, who have a high market share, and who specialize in a certain niche," he said.

Miao also pointed out that the ministry will further lower the threshold and welcome private capital in the telecommunications and defense sectors.

The ministry granted earlier this year licenses to 15 companies to run virtual telecom network services, which allow private companies to offer telecom services by piggybacking on the infrastructure of China's big three State-owned telecom carriers.

A total of 42 companies, including Alibaba Group, Tencent Holdings Ltd and Xiaomi Corp, are running trial virtual network services. As of March, 18 companies have seen their user base exceed one million.

Wang Xiaolan, president of high-tech manufacturing company Time Group Inc, said that she welcomed the top authorities' efforts to support private businesses.

Entrepreneurs from both China and abroad are on their way to transformation, during which private companies may indeed face challenges, she said.

"The latest efforts show the government's efforts to address the bottlenecks facing private businesses," she said.