Beijing Youth Daily:

The business environment has been a topic of wide concern. We have observed that Jilin province has made The Conference on Optimizing the Business Environment its first meeting of the year for four consecutive years. What efforts has Jilin made in this regard? Thank you. 

Cai Dong:

Thank you for your interest in Jilin's business environment. In recent years, Jilin has made significant progress in improving its business environment with digital technologies and advancing socioeconomic development through an optimized business environment. 

In 2018, we took the lead across China in formulating administrative services and a digital construction governance bureau. Adopting the model of provincial coordination as well as city and county application, we significantly improved online approval efficiency. The overall approval time for engineering construction projects has been reduced by over 60%, and the time to start a business has been shortened from the original 11 days to just 1 day with the fastest cases completed in just 20 minutes. We have implemented a credit evaluation reform for business entities in 41 fields, and, currently, the comprehensive city credit directories from various cities and prefectures rank among the top in the country.

The improvements in the business environment have injected strong momentum into Jilin province's high-quality development. In 2023, the number of business entities in Jilin increased by 14%, with the number of businesses entities per one thousand people ranking eighth nationwide. Over the past five years, the utilized capital of attracted investment has increased by over 30% annually, and a number of landmark and leading major projects have been implemented in Jilin. 

This year, we will launch initiatives focusing on improving the business environment. We have formulated 40 specific measures to facilitate breakthroughs as well as to solve key and minor problems, thus creating a first-class business environment featuring streamlined process and providing online and one-stop services.

For instance, in terms of administrative law enforcement, we have set up a mechanism for law enforcement supervision and management marked by "reporting in advance," "presenting certificates on-site," "scanning QR codes for inspection" and "follow-up evaluation." Law enforcement officers inspect and record through QR codes generated by the corresponding APP, inform about inspection matters by showcasing the QR code and then the businesses can make comments through the APP after the law enforcement actions. At the same time, we have also established a system of benchmarks for administrative discretion and made a list of cases that "receive no punishment for first violation" so as to effectively address issues of arbitrary law enforcement after a combination of policies and measures.

Regarding construction and approval of projects, for example, we implement "one-stop services or online handling." For cases that can't be handled online, we can provide assistance or proxy services and integrated access to government services, so that enterprises as well as the public can save more time and energy. In addition, concerning the protection of project factors, we have built a land-supply model combining "standardized land and a commitment system," set up a digital supermarket for available land, provided projects with land for construction in a targeted manner and promoted connectivity and interaction between immovable property registration platforms and financial platforms, thus realizing "one-stop" handling of mortgage loan and mortgage registration. Here, I'd like to share with you how we improved our efficiency and made significant changes. Taking the Audi FAW new energy vehicle project that was a collaboration between Jilin province and Germany as an example, we set up a special team for targeted services. It took only 20 minutes to complete the enterprise registration and the construction permit process was finished within 2 days. We completed handling of construction review and other procedures within 15 days, while capping the main structure of the factory area in 5 months. In one and a half years, the project was completed and started trial operation. Such speed was also highly praised by the German partners as "Chinese speed, industry miracle."

In short, Jilin's business environment is improving and its future bears high expectations. We welcome media friends to examine our work. Thank you.