Qingdao growing into international metropolis

Coastal city recently introduced 100 innovative policies to boost business environment

In recent years, the coastal city of Qingdao in East China's Shandong province has prioritized the quality of investment and market entities in optimizing its business environment, local officials said. It has also worked to build a modern international metropolis in the new era.

Qingdao is home to more than 2 million market entities, including 1.97 million private economic market entities. There are some 1.24 million individual business organizations in the city.

On Aug 19, Qingdao's information office released the Three-Year Action Plan for the Optimization and Improvement of Qingdao's Business Environment (2022-24), which is a new version of the Qingdao City Business Environment Optimization and Improvement Action Plan launched in 2021. The latest plan introduces 100 innovative breakthrough policies to create a market-oriented, legalized and world-class business environment.

Lu Yujun, director of the city's office for optimizing the business environment, said the reformed registration process of market entities has improved the efficiency of business registrations and applications.

He said that Qingdao has innovated "four unifications" of its government management system and supervision. The city implements one-stop service for real estate registration, transaction and tax payment.

Qingdao promotes a gamut of high-quality services including 25 measures to ensure the development of the private economy and optimize the business environment under the rule of law.

It gives full play to the advantages of Qingdao's relatively centralized administrative examination and approval reform system, while building a smart examination and approval platform as well as boosting government services.

The city has created a digital approval model in which 22 sectors and 428 government administrative items can be intelligently handled anytime and anywhere.

Wang Jun, deputy director of the city's office for optimizing the business environment, said that after three years, the efficiency of government governance has been comprehensively improved.

"The activity of market entities and the quality of development have been significantly improved, forming a number of 'Qingdao experiences' that can be replicated and promoted around the entire country.

"Qingdao aims to promote the digital transformation of its business environment at a higher level, and improve the satisfaction of various market players with good government services. A total of 26 innovative policies have been proposed," Wang said.

Qingdao also focuses on market fairness and takes action to improve the business environment under the rule of law.

The city has maintained the order of fair competition, protected various market players equally in accordance with the law, strengthened the rigid constraints of the fair competition review system, improved the administrative decision-making system, and created a stable, fair, transparent and predictable system for various market players.

Qingdao continues to improve the level of investment and trade facilitation, accelerating the construction of key functional areas, and effectively stimulating the vitality of various market players. It also improves the environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.

"Market players create a more dynamic environment for innovation and entrepreneurship. We will improve the level of public service facilitation and the quality of urban and rural environment, strengthen the construction of innovation and entrepreneurship carriers, continue to optimize the policy supply and gather high-quality resources for various types of businesses," Wang said.

Zhao Yan, deputy director of the Qingdao human resources and social security bureau, said that since the beginning of this year, the bureau has launched efficient services to stimulate market vitality and social creativity.

"The labor market supervision index ranks among the national benchmark cities in the business environment evaluation," Zhao said.

She said that Qingdao has implemented five key measures of policy support, supply and demand connection, skills improvement, employment assistance, and shared employment to revitalize the real economy and reduce 680 million yuan ($97.8 million) of social security fees for 270,000 insured units. Since the beginning of this year, the city has introduced 67,200 young talents.