Administrative approval reforms pay off

China's reform of administrative approval has generated a boom in startups and spurred the country's economic growth, a senior government official said.

In the past two years, 586 administrative approval conditions have been canceled or delegated to local governments and all non-administrative approvals have been scrapped, Lian Weiliang, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a news conference in Beijing.

The government has introduced online administrative approval and streamlined the process, he said.

The number of newly-registered companies last year increased 45.9 percent on the previous year and rose 18.5 percent in the first eight months of this year.

He said reform of State-owned enterprises (SOE) also gained momentum as the government introduced a series of guidelines.

The guideline, unveiled on Sunday, classifies SOEs in two groups for the first time: those for public service and those that are profit-oriented.

All profit-oriented SOEs should seek more investment from private investors or other State-owned capital to realize equity diversification, said Lian.

As a result, State-owned capital could hold a controlling share of equity or less. The guideline also says that all SOEs in this group should introduce corporate and shareholding systems and make full use of public listing.