China establishes bureau for private economy development amid strong policy support

BEIJING -- China has set up a bureau under the country's top economic planner specializing in promoting the private economy's development amid a raft of policies to ramp up the growth of the sector.

Cong Liang, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told a press conference Monday that the bureau was established to strengthen policy coordination in relevant areas and ensure that related measures are implemented as early as possible and achieve tangible results.

The main responsibilities of the bureau include tracking, studying, and analyzing the development of the private economy, coordinating and organizing the formulation of policies and measures to promote its development, and formulating policies to promote the growth of private investment, according to the commission.

The bureau will also be responsible for establishing a mechanism for regular communication with private enterprises, coordinating efforts to solve major problems concerning the development of the private economy, and working toward enhancing its international competitiveness.

Zhang Shixin, an official with the commission, noted that the work concerning the private economy involves a wide range of areas and requires close cooperation between various departments.

The private economy development bureau will mainly focus on the coordination of relevant work and policy implementation to create a better environment and ramp up support for the growth of the private economy, Zhang said.

Recently, China has introduced an array of policies to shore up the growth of the private economy.

In mid-July, the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued guidelines on boosting the growth of the private economy, promising to improve its business environment, enhance policy support, and strengthen legal guarantees for its development.

In late July, the NDRC unveiled 17 measures to encourage private investment further. It also worked with multiple departments and jointly released 28 measures to boost the growth of private enterprises in market access, factor support, legal guarantee, enterprise service, and business environment.

In early August, the country introduced and extended a string of preferential policies for small and private businesses in terms of tax and fee cuts.

To strengthen financial support for private investment, Cong said the NDRC has given full play to the investment-lending linkage mechanism established with seven banks, and referred the first batch of 715 private investment projects to relevant banks.

It has also recommended the first privately-invested clean-energy real-estate investment trusts (REITs) project to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and will recommend more qualified REITs projects in various fields.

To optimize the business environment for private companies, the State Administration for Market Regulation has continued to strengthen supervision and law enforcement, standardize market order, effectively ensure fair trading, and further shored up the protection of intellectual property rights, said Liu Jun, deputy head of the administration.

By the end of August, China's market regulation authorities had investigated and dealt with 17 cases involving monopoly agreements and the abuse of market dominance according to law, issuing a total fine of 910 million yuan (about 126.77 million U.S. dollars).

The authorities have investigated and handled 6,870 unfair competition cases since the beginning of this year, with a fine of 304 million yuan. During the first half of this year, they also investigated and dealt with 17,100 cases in the field of intellectual property rights protection.