'Most advanced county' creates 'best business environment' for years

One million market entities! Not in a mega city like Shanghai but in a county-level city.

Kunshan in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, has notched up an unprecedented achievement for a county-level city in China when Wang Maolin, a partner with Standard Robots, received the city's 1,000,000th business license from Li Wen, one of Kunshan's deputy mayors, at the local administrative examination and approval bureau on Tuesday.

It was his first trip to the bureau. All the documentation required to start the firm was submitted online, while all the procedures were handled by workers from Lujia township, where the firm is located.

"I never thought that the examination and approval would be this quick," said Wang. "It took us less than six months from signing the contract with Kunshan to receive the business license."

As a leading mobile robot system and core technology supplier in China, Standard Robots was introduced by the local Kunshan government from Shenzhen, Guangdong province last year.

Wang said he only visited Kunshan three times: to negotiate with the local government; to sign the contract; and to complete the firm's 14,000-square-meter global headquarters.

"The firm started operations in May, but workers from Lujia have taken the initiative to introduce five to six customers to us. I have full confidence that our business will develop steadily in Kunshan."

In 2020, the registered capital of new domestic enterprises in Kunshan exceeded 105.5 billion yuan ($16.2 billion), up 30 percent year-on-year, while State-owned enterprises' investment increased nearly 76 percent (but the corresponding actual figure was not available).

Kunshan has been improving its business environment for years. From July 2019, the city introduced independent declaration of market entities.

The time limit to start up a business was reduced from the statutory 20 working days to just one working day.

The city has been promoting electronic registration since 2020.All the registration procedures, including engraving seals, opening bank accounts and opening tax accounts, can be done online.

At the intelligent self-service registration terminals of the Kunshan government service hall, instead of submitting paperwork, qualified startups only need to complete facial recognition, ID card recognition or other recognition processes before proceeding to self-audit and then self-print the business licenses.

In 2020, 438,000 new market entities registered in Kunshan, swelling the total number to 932,000, according to the local government.

Qin Shanshan, director of the local development and reform commission, said the city announced 16 specific policies to further improve business environment in February.

"The policies aim to provide better services to business owners," Qin said. "The government has put forward policies to improve the business environment for three consecutive years. We've been striving to build a better business environment and set an example of good services for all the other county-level cities in China."

For instance, the procedures for approving the installation of water, electricity and gas equipment for companies in Kunshan have been simplified and the time required has been cut from about 15 working days to three working days.

Song Deqiang, Kunshan's deputy mayor, said the city will evaluate the impact its policies have had on the business environment, in order to provide still better services in the future.

"The policies will maximize market vitality and the creativity of society," he said. "The local government will continue to provide one of the best business environments in the country."

Dubbed "China's most advanced county", Kunshan saw its local GDP reach 427 billion yuan in 2020 and its total industrial output value exceed 1 trillion yuan despite COVID-19.

The county-level city has remained in first place on the list of China's top 100 counties for more than 10 years.