Creating market access for all will help upgrade the industry

China's central authorities introduced guidelines on Wednesday for improving the market access system. The implementation of the guidelines will be conducive to improving the market access system and optimizing the market access environment for new business forms and in new areas.

The guidelines make clear the objectives for the construction of the market access system, saying the country will build an open and transparent market access system with standardized, orderly and equal competition, clear rights and responsibilities, and strong supervision. It also requires all kinds of market access management measures under the framework of the law to be included in the national unified negative list for market access, prohibiting the illegal establishment of access permits outside the list, the illegal addition of access conditions, and the setting of negative lists similar to the market access in nature. This will ensure there is only one negative list and no other lists are allowed to exist, establishing the seriousness of the market access system.

The document emphasizes coordinated and integrated access policies for domestic and foreign investment, and equal national treatment for the two. Where access restrictions are lifted on foreign investment, they should be lifted on domestic investment, too, and the entry threshold set for domestic investment should also be applied to foreign investment, it says. This is a problem-oriented approach to implement equal market access for domestic and foreign investment.

For new business forms and fields, the guidelines call for the formulation of implementation plans to optimize the market environment, to improve access efficiency, promote the innovative allocation of production factors, and accelerate the development of new quality productive forces. Given that some new business forms and new areas are facing unclear access rules and their ways to access the market need to be optimized, relaxing market access for new business forms and new areas will help more social forces to enter industries that used to have "high thresholds" and promote the smooth flow of advanced and high-quality production factors to generate new quality productive forces.

The service industry is the area with the greatest market potential, and social capital, especially private capital and foreign capital, has a strong willingness for entry. Further clearing up all kinds of restrictions on access to the service industry, removing explicit or implicit market barriers, and relaxing market access in a timely manner, will help create a market accessible to all kinds of players and promote the deep transformation and upgrading of the industry.