Explainer: Whys and whats of China's unified domestic market

What changes will it bring to enterprises and consumers?

The guideline includes plans covering six areas, including market regulation and supervision, the submarkets of factors and resources and goods and services, and measures against unfair competition and market intervention.

China will strengthen the unity of basic market institutions in property rights protection, market entry, fair competition and social credit.

The property rights of enterprises will be better protected along with the personal and property safety of entrepreneurs. It will treat all market entities equally and strictly forbid the issuance of local negative lists for market access.

Efforts will be made to promote high-level connectivity of market facilities by upgrading the circulation network, smoothing information exchanges, and optimizing trading platforms to improve efficiency.

China will optimize the layout of commercial and trade circulation infrastructure and promote the integration of online and offline development. It will also support the building of digital third-party logistics delivery platforms and cultivate a batch of digital platform and supply chain enterprises with global influence.

Measures will be taken to construct unified factors and resource markets. Unified land and labor markets in urban and rural areas will be optimized, while unified markets will be created for capital, technology and data, energy and ecology.

High-level integration of markets for goods and services will also be shored up, with a focus on areas of concern to the public and market entities.

Standards will be optimized for modern distribution, big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, 5G, the internet of things and energy storage. A list for consumer protection will be released covering housing, education and training, medical and healthcare, and elderly and child care.

More work will also be done on antimonopoly review systems in order to determine monopolistic behavior. The country will prevent platform enterprises from utilizing data, algorithms and other technical means to hinder competition and further crackdown on unfair competition in new business forms such as platforms and sharing economy.

China will also promptly review and abolish policies preventing the formation of a unified market and fair competition, such as local protectionism, market segmentation and designated trading, and comprehensively review preferential policies discriminating against foreign-invested or non-local enterprises.