China's Urban Business Environment Report 2018

At 3 pm on December 12, 2018, the Central Radio and Television General Station held the launching ceremony of "China's Urban Business Environment Report 2018" in Beijing. This is the first Chinese business environment evaluation report that be released by the national media, with independent third party preparation and authoritative characteristics.At the press conference, the Top Ten cities in China's urban business environment rankings were published in 2018, followed by Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Nanjing, and Xi'an. And the seven evaluations factors were also announced.The evaluation results show that the overall business environment of the first-tier cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou is the highest, ranking the top four in the overall ranking.In the seven-dimension evaluation list, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou has six evaluation factors entered the top ten respectively, and five evaluations in Shenzhen entered the top ten. Specifically, in the establishment of a good business environment, the core cities with comprehensive strength are leading in the overall level, while other cities show their characteristics in their respective advantages.The First Dimension: InfrastructureGuangzhou ranks first in terms of continuous strengthening of urban hub network functions and leading services such as education and medical care in South China.The Second Dimension: Human ResourcesIn the dimension of human resources evaluation, it mainly evaluates the quantity and quality of labor resources supply, the basics of talent supply, urban treatment and salary attractiveness. Beijing ranks first.The Third Dimension: Financial ServicesIn terms of the dimension of financial services, Shanghai and Beijing are ranked the first and the second respectively, which has a large distance from other cities. The Fourth Dimension: The Government EnvironmentIn the dimension of government environmental assessment, Guangzhou topped the list. This is the embodiment of Guangzhou's continuous improvement of public service quality and administrative efficiency in recent years.The Fifth Dimension: The rule of law environmentIn the ranking of the legal environment evaluation dimension, Changsha and Jinan performed outstandingly, and they were ranked the first and the second respectively.The Sixth Dimension: Innovative EnvironmentIn the dimension of innovation environmental assessment, as the fourth National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone approved by the State Council and the first National Innovative City, Shenzhen was ranked the first with unquestionable. Chongqing and Chengdu, which are located in the southwest, ranking third and fourth respectively.The Seventh Dimension: Social EnvironmentIn the dimension of social environmental assessment, Beijing was ranked first, and the construction of urban credit system is in a stage of comprehensive upgrading, which is much ahead of other cities.

Why New Energy Auto can be developed rapidly in China？

Chinese auto market in this year is likely to experience the first negative growth since 1990. From January to October, the total sales of automobiles is 22.87 million units, down 0.1% year-on-year; in October, it fell 11.7% year-on-year, the largest monthly decline since 2012.At the same time, however, the new energy auto industry has gone against the market, not only has sales soared, but also poured into dozens of new companies in just one or two years.Among them, Weilai Automobile was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Shanghai. In just four years, it has set up R&D, design, production and business institutions in San Jose, Munich, London, Shanghai and other 13 cities, assembled thousands of the world's top industry talent in automotive, software and user experience.In the same year, Xiaopeng Automobile was founded in Guangzhou. Also in four years, it established R&D and production centers in Silicon Valley, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, Zhaoqing, Zhengzhou and other cities, and assembled more than 3,000 top talents from different cities, 60% of which are R&D personnel.In the downtrend of global automotive industry, domestic new energy vehicles are experiencing explosive growth. In the first three quarters of 2018, under the policy incentives, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 734,600 and 721,500 respectively, up 73.05% and 81.05% respectively. By 2020, the sales of new energy passenger vehicles in the Chinese market are expected to be broken through 1.8 million vehicles.The rapid development of China's new energy auto industry is inseparable from the state's policy support. Before 2016, the central government allocated a total of 33.44 billion yuan in subsidies for new energy vehicles. On May 25, 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology confirmed that new energy auto companies should value a total of about 18.972 billion yuan of subsidy funds in the 2016 and 2017, and the total subsidies totaled 52.4 billion. In addition to the direct subsidies, exemption purchase tax and license preferential policies also provide consumers with more reasons to choose new energy vehicles.As mentioned above, it is obvious that the business environment of new energy auto in China has advantage on the large extent.

China's core AI industry to exceed 145 bln USD by 2030: report

The value of China's core Artificial Intelligence (AI) industries could exceed 1 trillion yuan (145.47 billion U.S. dollars) by 2030, with that of AI-enabled industries more than 10 trillion yuan, a latest report by Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) said.Titled "China's great tech leap forward", the report said that China's push to commercialize AI technologies, supported by the rollout of the world's biggest 5G network, could position the country as a global leader for technology and innovation."Based on the growth trajectory in the past decade, China may overtake the U.S. in global technology-patents share by 2025," said the report.AI-related industries may exceed 6 percent of China's GDP by 2030, according to the report.In the report, BI analysts said the country's abundance of data may fuel the acceleration of the industry.China's breakneck pace of consumer-lifestyle digitization potentially gives researchers unique access to Chinese-language data generated by its 1.4 billion people as they go about their daily activities both online and offline.Vey-Sern Ling, senior industry analyst at Bloomberg intelligence, said China may overtake global peers in the commercialization of AI technologies, as large amount of capital is likely to continue pouring into the industry.According to Tsinghua University, private funding for Chinese AI-related companies in 2017 totaled 27.7 billion dollars, equivalent to 70 percent of global investments in the industry.Data showed China's cumulative venture-capital investments in AI startups had already caught up with the United States by 2016.Ling, also the lead analyst of the report, said the top-down support is an important factor apart from the multi-faceted user data and the funding available in China to the industry's fast development."I don't think anywhere else in the world you have the government so strongly behind, identifying the technology pillar and bearing full weight," said Ling.He added that China's potential dominance in AI by 2030 may be led by developments in transportation, corporate services, health care and finance.Source: en.people.cn

The rank of China's Urban Innovation Competitiveness

Recently, relevant institutions announced the list of 2018 China's urban innovation competitiveness. It is reported that this list is depended on three dimensions to comprehensively measure the innovation competitiveness of each city: the investment of innovation (R&D expenditure); the results of innovation, namely the number of patents (including annual application volume, authorization amount, and PCT, etc.); and the entities of innovation (high-tech enterprise).This ranking is compiled by weighting the above three dimensions. In the end, 25 mainland cities were selected for this list.In the list, Beijing ranked the first, the second is Shenzhen, and the third is Shanghai. On the whole, the Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang and other main economic provinces are more selected cities, and nine national central cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Chengdu, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chongqing, and Zhengzhou were selected.As the first place, the performance of Beijing was the most prominent in this selection. In 2017, R&D expenditure reached 159.5 billion yuan, up 7.5% than last year, accounting for 5.7% of the regional GDP, ranking the highest in the country. As a national political center, cultural center, international communication center, and science and technology innovation center, Beijing has gathered many large state-owned enterprises, such as State Grid and PetroChina Co Ltd.. The total number of high-tech enterprises has also reached 20,197. There are more than 8,000 high-tech enterprises that only added in 2017, accounting for 43% of the total.As the ranked second, the number of PCT applications in Shenzhen reached 20,500 in 2017, accounting for almost one-half of the national total. In 2017, Shenzhen's R&D investment exceeded 90 billion, accounting for 4.13% of GDP. The rapid development of Shenzhen makes "Made in China" no longer limited to the supply of raw materials. In any place in the world, seeing drones or electric buses, those may come from Shenzhen's Dajiang Science and Technology and BYD. Shenzhen innovation mainly comes from private enterprises, and the potential for innovation competitiveness is huge.As an international metropolis, Shanghai's innovation competitiveness is also very strong. Its patent application volume was 131,746 in 2017, accounting for 9.53% of the total number of patent applications nationwide. The number of high-tech enterprises in Shanghai during the period of 2015-2017 reached 7,642, of which 3,247 were newly identified as high-tech enterprises in 2017. In addition to the above cities, other cities on the list  also cannot be ignored in terms of strength.The strength of Xi'an is not to be underestimated. The R&D expenditure intensity is 4.82%, which is  higher than the provincial R&D expenditure intensity by 2.7%, and it is also higher than the national R&D expenditure intensity by 2.69%. The investment intensity of R&D expenditure in Wuhan and Hangzhou was 3.2% and 3.16%, respectively, which were 1.07% and 1.03% higher than the national R&D expenditure intensity.Chengdu's GDP in 2017 accounted for 37.6% of Sichuan's GDP, and the number of patent applications reached 113,956, and the number of patents granted was 410,88, accounting for 9.78% of the total number of patents granted nationwide. In 2017, there were 2,437 high-tech enterprises, accounting for 68.24% of the total number of high-tech enterprises in Sichuan Province, and has 376 new enterprises than last year.Wuhan's R&D expenditure in 2017 was 42.9 billion yuan, accounting for 3.2% of the Wuhan GDP.  In 2017, Wuhan's high-tech enterprises reached 2,827, an increase of 23%. The number of international patent (PCT) applications was 1,219, accounting for 2.54% of the national PCT.The competition in Chinese cities will become a competition for innovation eventually. In addition to industry, talent, and capital, the reasonable innovation planning is becoming more and more important.

Beijing issued "High-tech Industry Registration Guidance Catalogue"(2018)

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the 2018 edition of the "High-tech Industry Registration Guidance Catalogue", which focuses on the emerging fields, high-end links and innovative formats of the industry, covering high-tech products and services,  it is an important guidance for attracting foreign investment.This "Industry Guidance Catalog" includes  several major industries as follow: New Generation Information Technology, Integrated Circuits, Medical Health, Intelligence Equipment, Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection, New Energy Vehicles, New Materials, Artificial Intelligence, Software and Information Services, and Technology Services. Moreover, as a key direction and support industries for Beijing, the "Catalogue" is an important basis for formulating and implementing industrial policies such as finance, taxation, finance, science and technology, talent, land and planning.In addition, in recent years, Beijing has gradually released many policies incentives to attract foreign investment.Foreign-funded Enterprises registration can be electronizationIn April 2017, Beijing initiated the electronic registration of Foreign-funded Enterprises, the full process from registration applications to issue the Electronic Business Licenses, can be achieved by paperless. Attorneys entrusted by the company can help with the relevant procedures online.Relaxation of service industry access restrictionsIn the service industry, it will focus on relaxing foreign investment access restrictions for Banking Financial Institutions, Securities Companies, Securities Investment Fund Management Companies, Futures Companies, Insurance Institutions, and Insurance Agency, and promote the orderly opening of Telecommunications, Internet, Culture, Education, Transportation and other fields.Uniform implementation of Domestic and Freign-funded EnterprisesIn order to achieve a fair and just business environment, a series of relevant measures have been formulated, for example, to implement uniform standard audit business licenses and qualification applications for domestic and foreign-funded enterprises and support foreign-funded companies to expand financing channels. 

Doing business in China becomes easier, reports say

China's business environment has significantly improved, as results from two recent reports showed.According to Shanghai Securities News, citing a report issued by the Academy of China Council for the Promotion of International Trade on Thursday, nearly 90 percent of 4,000 enterprises that participated in a survey felt it had become easier to do business in China over the past three years. As for this year, the surveyed firms, including private-owned, State-owned and foreign-owned companies across the country's 25 provinces and regions, were satisfied with the business environment in China, scoring 4.17 against the total five, up from 3.85 in 2016.Noticeably, enterprises in central areas, wholly foreign-owned enterprises and hi-tech enterprises gave their highest-scored feedbacks.At the end of October, World Bank's report also endorsed China's reform efforts to better its business environment for small and medium enterprises. As Doing Business 2019: Training for Reform report showed, China, the only economy from East Asia and the Pacific to join this year's top 10 improvers, jumped more than 30 spots to its highest ever ranking — 46th place in the annual global rankings.And the report highlighted China's progress in areas, including starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, though dealing with construction permits in China still ranks at 121, with 20 procedures in order to obtain all permits and authorization to build a warehouse here, compared with an average of 15 procedures in East Asia and Pacific region."China has made rapid progress in improving its business climate for domestic small and medium enterprises in the past year. This progress, which now puts China among the top 50 economies in the world, signals the value the government places on nurturing entrepreneurship and private enterprise," said Bert Hofman, World Bank country director for China.Yu Haiyan, deputy inspector of development research department at China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, told Shanghai Securities News that to create a business environment that is market-driven, law-based and up to international standards is still an important task for China at present and days ahead.The State Council, China's cabinet, decided on Wednesday to set up a system for evaluating the business environment in China that is comparable internationally, aligned with World Bank standards and reflects Chinese features, with criteria covering areas of immediate concern to market entities, such as ease of opening a business, construction licensing, access to electricity and credit, paying taxes and the protection of intellectual property rights.And relevant authorities and departments will be encouraged to come up with more measures for bettering the business climate.Chinese government will eliminate all limits that go beyond the official negative list for foreign investment by the end of March next year, Tang Wenhong, an official with the Ministry of Commerce, said earlier, adding that the revision of two guidance catalogues for foreign investment will also be finished by the time.Source: China Daily