Beijing Mayor Chen Jining stated that Beijing will advance high-standard development of the "Two Zones" and pursue new progress in reform and opening-up during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) in the report on government work he delivered at the fourth session of the 15th Beijing Municipal People's Congress on January 23, 2021. The "Two Zones" refer to the comprehensive demonstration zone for further opening up the service sector and China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, Beijing carried out pilot schemes for further opening up the service sector and implemented 403 new measures to support about one fifth of the national trade in services.
In 2021, said Chen Jining, Beijing will promote high-level institutional opening-up, put into practice 251 reform and opening-up measures concerning the "Two Zones", and accelerate the establishment of an internationally accepted investment and trade service system. Beijing will also explore to implement groundbreaking policies on the allocation of land, capital, talents, technologies, data and other production factors. Cross-border data flow pilot will be carried out and an international hub for information industry and digital trade will be built.
In addition, Beijing will speed up construction of all the areas and clusters of China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone, particularly promoting the development of the Capital Airport Economic Demonstration Zone, advancing the completion and operation of Phase I of the Beijing Daxing International Airport Comprehensive Bonded Zone, and making efforts in driving the development of Sino-Germany, Sino-Japan and other international innovation cooperation parks.
In respect of financial opening-up, Beijing will ensure its function and services for the national financial management center and spearhead the landing of national policies on financial opening-up. It will introduce and implement plans for pilot zones for green finance and technology innovation finance, and speed up the construction of innovation demonstration zones for Fin-Tech and professional services. Beijing will work on pilot application of digital currency, improve the rules for "regulatory sandbox" and put forth efforts in developing wealth management, infrastructure finance and other emerging financial businesses.
Meanwhile, this year Beijing will continuously deepen the 4.0 version of business environment reform and firmly eliminate hidden administrative barriers by advancing the reform separating permits from the business license and the system of administrative approval via notification and commitment. Specifically, it will strengthen the in-process and ex post supervision and improve market regulation through random selection of both inspectors and inspection targets and prompt release of results. Efforts will be made in further standardizing law enforcement and advancing the full-process credit and risk supervision to minimize impact on the regular operation of enterprises. Beijing will fully implement integrated administrative service solutions to individual issues related to starting a business or critical to people’s livelihood, and further complete online full-process services and on-site services accessible to all to save energy and cost of the people and enterprises.
(Note: Content source is from Xinhuanet)