Nanjing, Suzhou, Nantong and Wuxi rank top in business environment

According to the Report on Business Environment in Chinese Cities 2019 released on June 18, Nanjing ranked the sixth in the comprehensive ranking of business environment in 36 cities; Suzhou ranked the first, Nantong the second, Wuxi the fourth, and Changzhou, Yancheng, Xuzhou, Taizhou and Suqian among the top 20 in the comprehensive ranking of top 100 cities with economic vitality.

Base on the evaluation system of business environment of the World Bank, the Report on Business Environment in Chinese Cities set up an evaluation system of business environment in Chinese cities from five dimensions, namely, infrastructure, human resources, financial services, government environment, and inclusive innovation. The 36 cities were 4 cities directly under the Central Government, 27 capital cities of provinces and autonomous regions, and five cities with independent planning status, which are Xiamen, Dalian, Ningbo, Qingdao and Shenzhen. In the comprehensive ranking of business environment, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, which are first-tier cities, ranked the top four, while Chongqing and Nanjing, which are new first-tier cities, ranked the fifth and the sixth respectively. Nanjing stood out in urban human resources and infrastructure, ranking the third and the sixth respectively. The report also evaluated the economically active cities with top 100 GDP in 2018 in addition to the 36 cities, and eight cities of our province were among the top 20 according to the comprehensive ranking.

Many cities in our province focused on “branding” in improving the business environment. For example, this year, Suzhou released the business service brand of “Utmost Satisfaction in Suzhou” and the international business service brand with the initials of four S, namely, “Supreme Service, Super Suzhou; Wuxi proposed the business environment brand of “nothing is difficult with Wuxi’s utmost efforts”; and Nanjing launched the “Nanjing for Your Satisfaction” initiative last May and worked on it as its new government service brand.

Many cities made public specific measures to continuously improve the business environment so as to enhance the competitiveness of cities. The Implementation Opinions of Nantong on Continuous Improvement of the Business Environment issued last October rolled out a package of important measures in terms of comprehensively improving “life cycle” services for enterprises, enhancing the attractiveness of urban investment, and strengthening the efficacy of market supervision services. The Innovation Action of Suzhou for Improvement of the Business Environment 2020 released in March, consisting of 46 detailed rules and regulations, explicitly set out the goals of “striving to make greater breakthroughs in the rule of law and integrity, intelligent government services, enterprise services, resource allocation, win-win cooperation, and overall planning and coordination”. The Action Plan of Wuxi for Improvement of the Business Environment 2020, which was made public in April, focused on creating first-class government service environment, policy environment, market environment and rule of law environment with 60 specific measures regarding 18 aspects in six major parts to push forward further breakthroughs in reform, further innovation and improvement of systems in various fields.