Recently, local development and reform commissions have held intensive meetings to finalize the "task list" for economic reforms in 2024, with priorities including deepening the reform of the investment and financing system, serving the construction of a unified national market, and creating an upgraded version of the business environment. Industry insiders pointed out that 2024 is a critical year for achieving the goals and tasks of the 14th Five-Year Plan, and it is necessary to comprehensively deepen reforms in key areas, continuously promote the optimization of the economic structure and the enhancement of growth momentum, and drive the development trend to continue improving.

At the turn of the year, local development and reform commissions successively held annual work meetings to arrange and deploy key development and reform tasks for 2024. The reporter noted that many places have placed investment work in a prominent position, further leveraging the key role of effective investment, advancing the reform of the investment and financing system, and stimulating the vitality of private investment. Hunan Province proposed deepening reforms in the investment and financing and price fields; Anhui Province proposed standardizing the implementation of new mechanisms for government and social capital cooperation.

To further deepen the reform of the infrastructure investment and financing system, in November 2023 the General Office of the State Council forwarded the Guiding Opinions on Standardizing the Implementation of New Mechanisms for Government and Social Capital Cooperation issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance. At the recent annual investment work meetings held by local development and reform commissions, various localities further clarified the key points of investment and financing system reform for 2024.

Among them, Yunnan Province proposed implementing key links such as the new mechanism for government and social capital cooperation, so that private capital has "something to invest in," "invests well," and "can enter"; Henan Province proposed focusing on strengthening project planning and demonstration, improving the investment management system, and enhancing investment approval efficiency, among other aspects, to strengthen whole-process project management.

In the view of Feng Qiaobin, deputy director of the Macroeconomic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, at present, as China's growth shifts from investment-driven to consumption-driven and from focusing on economic growth speed in the past to pursuing high-quality economic and social development, China's investment has also entered a new period. The current investment and financing system shows some aspects that are no longer compatible, including that the boundary between government and market is still not entirely clear, investment arrangements face the contradiction between the present and the long term, and some investments lack economies of scale.

"The investment and financing system is one of the cores of China's economic system and is highly related to correctly handling the relationship between government and market, promoting the transformation of government functions, and effectively mobilizing and stimulating the vitality of private investment," Feng Qiaobin said. The era of driving economic growth through large-scale, high-intensity investment has largely passed, and future economic growth in China will rely more on the release of consumption momentum under the unified national market. The government investment and financing system must adapt to this profound change, promptly shrink its scale, adjust its scope, optimize investment entities, and pay more attention to quality and efficiency.

Serving the construction of a unified national market has also been listed as a reform priority for various localities in 2024. The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region proposed fully implementing the "one list" management model for market access and effectively breaking down local protection and market segmentation.

It will deeply advance the market-oriented allocation reform of the "five major factors" of land, labor, capital, technology, and data, and integrate into and serve the unified national market. Jiangsu Province stated that it will focus on serving the construction of a unified national market and thoroughly implement the action plan for building a high-standard market system.

Recently, the market supervision departments of Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei signed the Framework Agreement on Jointly Building "Credit Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei" to promote cross-regional mutual recognition of credit information and to study and formulate local standards for unified credit supervision of business entities within the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

At a recent press conference held by the State Council Information Office, Li Chunlin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, introduced that the construction of the unified national market has currently made certain progress and achieved results, with efforts focused on eliminating a number of prominent problems of local protection and market segmentation, and a number of key tasks to promote efficient market connectivity have produced results. The reporter learned that next, relevant departments will study and formulate standard guidelines for the construction of the unified national market. At the same time, they will intensify pilot exploration and encourage Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, and other regions to take the lead in carrying out regional market integration construction.

In addition, a series of reforms in key areas such as optimizing the business environment will also be further advanced. Liaoning Province, Hubei Province, and many other places proposed creating an "upgraded version" of the business environment in 2024; Hunan Province proposed deepening the three-year action plan for optimizing the business environment.

The recently released Several Measures for Chengdu to Continuously Optimize the Business Environment and Promote High-Quality Enterprise Development proposed 100 measures in areas such as "facilitating access, operation, and exit," "improving municipal public services," and "improving tax service levels," including fully implementing the commitment system for enterprise name declaration and implementing the commitment system for same-industry access under "one address, one license" in the field of market supervision.

"Comprehensively deepen reforms in key areas. Accelerate the construction of the unified national market, focus on breaking down various forms of local protection and market segmentation, and promote the standardized and healthy development of the bidding and tendering market. Create a market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized first-class business environment, and carry out business environment evaluations in due course. Further improve the government procurement system and improve the basic system of social credit. Continuously improve the systems and mechanisms for implementing the 'two unswervinglys' and fully stimulate the internal driving force and innovative vitality of various business entities," said Zheng Shanjie, director of the National Development and Reform Commission, in a recent article.