In recent years, Nantong city of Jiangsu province has been committed to creating a market-oriented and first-class business environment for enterprises.

Since 2022, Nantong has formulated and implemented the New 66 Articles to optimize its business environment and has also taken the lead in introducing favorable policies in the province.

The city has handled a total of 29.51 billion yuan ($4.24 billion) in tax refunds, ranking third in the province.

And as of December, Nantong had more than 1.1 million market entities including some 300,000 enterprises, 54 domestic and foreign listed companies and 61 "little giant" enterprises. The city has formed five industrial clusters with a scale of 100 billion yuan.

Wu Xinming, mayor of Nantong, said the city is revving up efforts to simplify administrative approval and reduce "procedures, materials, time limits and costs".

To solve problems such as cumbersome and complex procedures, Nantong began standardizing government services in 2012 and deepened reforms such as public service standards.

Nantong has unveiled its latest 5.0 version of the standard system on government services and started 136 pilot demonstration projects.

"We must continuously enhance enterprises' sense of gain and satisfaction while also creating a sound business ecosystem with more efficient policies," Wu said.

The city has launched the "Nantong Baitong" smart platform to integrate the previous 18 government services.

Shen Lei, deputy Party secretary of Nantong, said the city insists on creating a fair and orderly market environment to reach Jiangsu province's goal of becoming "the most convenient".

Nantong's administrative examination and approval bureau has set up a "one-stop" zone offering integrated services for enterprises to start a business.

Qu Yongguo, director of the bureau, said: "Nantong has issued electronic certificates such as electronic business licenses to enterprises and is the first in the province to realize the cross-provincial registration of branches without submitting paper materials."

He said that the average time for the entire process of starting a business is 1.29 working days.

For the approval of engineering construction projects, the bureau and the Nantong housing and urban-rural development bureau jointly carry out review and inspection.

They strengthened supervision during and after the event, improved the approval service in the stage of investment promotion, conducted the whole-chain pre-examination of the project from approval to construction.

Nantong's bureau of natural resources and planning has explored the new service model of "issuing certificates upon delivery of housing (land)" and visited enterprises to learn about unique project construction situations. The city's taxation bureau endeavors to improve the quality and efficiency of tax service and shorten average processing times by 40 percent.

Market players can enjoy more convenient and high-quality services through the application of technologies such as the internet and big data.

The integrated platform of citywide government services that Nantong is promoting can not only facilitate business affairs for the public, but also more directly supervise the departmental work process and time limit.

In the next step, Nantong will cater to the needs of market players, deepen "decentralization, management and service" reform and further refine supervision measures.

It will also accelerate the rule of law in the construction process to boost high-quality economic and social development.