Changchun cultivates powerful business environment for enterprises

Changchun, in Jilin province, has carried out continuous and in-depth improvements of its business environment in recent years to meet both domestic and international high-quality standards, local officials said.

The provincial capital has also implemented a comprehensive industrial revitalization strategy, and deepened the reform of government services to better facilitate and boost the vitality of market entities.

In May, Changchun was invited to share its experience at a national meeting on optimizing the business environment, mainly hosted by the National Development and Reform Commission in Suzhou, Jiangsu province.

During the meeting, the commission spoke highly of the positive results that Changchun has achieved in improving its business environment, such as the reforms implemented in key areas and more convenient procedures for both enterprises and individuals in dealing with business affairs.

Last year, Changchun became one of the 18 cities in China with the highest improvement rate in convenience of doing businesses.

Xu Liuping, chairman of China FAW Group, a leading automaker based in Changchun, used the word "outstanding" when commenting on the city's business environment at the 4th German-Chinese Automobile Congress held in October 2020.

Lei Ping, the company's deputy general manager, also said: "FAW's sustained and rapid growth these years has largely benefited from the favorable business environment created by Changchun and the province, which also further strengthens our confidence and determination to deepen our roots in Changchun." Established in 1953 and first put into production in 1956, FAW now serves as a leader in promoting industrial revitalization in Changchun and even Jilin, and makes great contributions to boosting regional economic growth.

Last year, Changchun started to pour more resources into developing the city's international "auto city", which has a major duty of serving FAW. The project, covering a total area of 471 square kilometers, aims to become a demonstration zone for the high-quality development of the auto industry, and a leading research, production and marketing service center of vehicles and auto parts. Following the province's spirit of supporting FAW to become a world-leading company, the international auto city has made many efforts to serve the company's reform and innovation initiatives, and also provided more accurate services to promote the transformation and upgrading of FAW's business.

It currently has nine service departments to serve the company in different fields with a diversified communication mechanism. It also works with FAW to plan the development directions of new production capacity, new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, and auto parts and accessories, in a bid to create a new industrial ecosystem.

The auto city has supported FAW and Jilin University to jointly build a "school of Hongqi", a brand under FAW, to develop high-quality human resources tailored for the company.

It also introduced a group of key projects related to new energy vehicles to meet FAW's needs for hydrogen-fueled vehicle tests and mass production.

Its efforts pertaining to the improvement of its business environment include the upgrading of government service halls to streamline administrative procedures, defining departments with clear duties and establishing task lists for construction projects.

So far, it has solved more than 600 problems for FAW. The initiative has promoted rapid progress in some major projects like the reconstruction of Hongqi factory, the establishment of the J7 truck intelligent factory of FAW Jiefang, and Premium Platform Electric-based vehicle production cooperated by Audi and FAW.

The auto city has received dozens of thank-you letters from FAW and other enterprises. It has also attracted 197 supporting projects with a total investment of nearly 60 billion yuan ($9.4 billion).

This year, more than 100 major projects have been launched in the auto city, each with an investment of more than 50 million yuan.

Against the backdrop of regular epidemic prevention and control, the auto city and FAW set up a related department together to ensure the smooth logistics and the supply of auto parts, and guarantee the security of the industrial chain.

Earlier this year, the auto city also conducted a comprehensive safety inspection centering on dangerous chemicals, road traffic, fire protection, gas, metal smelting and other key areas. Nearly 8,000 locations with potential risks have been discovered, of which 4,850 have been fixed.

In the future, the auto city said it would continue to create a stable, fair, transparent and consistent development environment, and to become a trustworthy strategic partner of enterprises.