Business operators have a special day to celebrate annually in Qingdao, Shandong province. Entrepreneurs' Day, which falls on Nov 1, was designated by the standing committee of the Qingdao people's congress in October 2021 to express thankfulness to entrepreneurs for their contributions to the city's development.

During this year's event, the 2024 list of the top 100 Qingdao-based businesses and the 2023 list of demonstration enterprises for corporate social responsibility in Qingdao were released, signifying the local economy's upward momentum, leading industry players' growing strength and local companies' rising CSR awareness, organizers said.

Official data show that as of the end of September, Qingdao was home to 2.07 million private business entities and 777,000 private enterprises. The private economy contributes more than 60 percent of the city's tax revenue, nearly 70 percent of its imports and exports, over 80 percent of new urban employment, and more than 90 percent of the total number of business entities and enterprises. It plays a crucial role in stabilizing growth, promoting innovation, increasing employment, and improving people's well-being.

The city's top policymakers have issued a series of encouraging policies, promoting entrepreneurship and advancing the construction of entrepreneur teams.

Additionally, the city has decided to select outstanding entrepreneurs every five years and provide substantial rewards to those chosen. The first batch of 42 entrepreneurs received their awards in February 2023. In addition to the honor, they were also presented with the "Qingdao Entrepreneur Service Card", which offers them preferential treatment and guarantees in areas such as medical care, transportation and children's education.

The city has also issued the country's first government regulations on promoting the growth of both local private and small and medium-sized enterprises, boosting the confidence of entrepreneurs; rolled out a plan for encouraging the healthy growth of young business talent involved in the private economy; launched a program to create growth platforms for mentorship and handson experiences in a bid to promote the construction of young entrepreneur teams. Additionally, a monitoring system was established to develop the private economy, encompassing more than 100 indicator data points.

According to Guo Zhendong, director of the Qingdao bureau of private sector development, the city has established a unified service platform for enterprises citywide, which includes a sub-platform for policy release and implementation, a financing service sub-platform and a sub-platform for businesses to file complaints and for the authorities to handle their complaints.

The policy release and implementation of the sub-platforms has accumulated 8.6 million views and gathered 28,000 policy information entries.

In response to Qingdao's business-friendly environment, entrepreneurs have also shown great enthusiasm in giving back to the city. Recently, the list of the top 100 enterprises in Shandong for 2024 was announced, and Qingdao ranks first in the province with 21 companies on the list from the city. Of them, four are newcomers from Qingdao.

At the same time, Qingdao has fully leveraged the role of trade associations as bridges and platforms, facilitating exchanges and communication between the government and enterprises.