Ships sail on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Zigui county of Yichang city, central China's Hubei Province, Aug. 16, 2022. (Photo: China News Service/Zheng Jiayu)

 
China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) on Thursday unveiled a plan to create a world-class business environment in the Yangtze River Delta, a major economic hub, in order to realize free and orderly flow of materials and other resources by 2025, while move to eliminate administrative barriers in the area. 

A unified and open market system will be basically established in the delta. It will fully align with the international system of high-standard market rules and reach a higher level of coordinated opening-up, the NDRC said in a statement. 

It also aims to improve services for trade and investment, lower businesses' regulatory costs, boost market players' vitality and quality, and comprehensively improve the effectiveness of governance. 

The NDRC said that a first-class, market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment will be set up, further improving the delta area's competitiveness in the world.

Roughly the size of Germany, the delta area - which falls within the ambit of East China's Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, and the city of Shanghai - has been one of China's most economically active, open and innovative regions.

The NDRC vowed to promote a higher level of opening-up in the region, with measures to improve services for foreigners' investment, cultivate a highly competitive talent hub and improve trade facilitation. 

With the largest GDP scale in the region, Jiangsu on Tuesday announced 84 measures to reduce businesses' regulatory costs. By the end of the year, 94 percent of government service procedures will be available online, media reports said.

In the first nine months of the year, Jiangsu recorded an actual use of foreign capital of $25.88 billion, up 17.2 percent year-on-year. It accounted for 16.7 percent of the nation's total, ranking first among the provinces and regions.

The increasingly integrated and developed Yangtze River Delta area recorded a rosy economic recovery in the third quarter, reporting a 6.8-percent GDP growth rate, higher than the nation's 3.9-percent gain in the same period. 

In the first three quarters, the economic hub's GDP totaled 20.9 trillion yuan ($2.88 trillion), accounting for nearly one-fourth of the national total, according to domestic news outlet Shanghai Observer.

Global Times