People take photos outside the venue of the 2025 China International Big Data Industry Expo on August 28. (Photo/Xinhua)

Beijing - China's State Council has approved 10 projects for piloting comprehensive reforms on market-based allocation of production factors.

The initiative, which is effective immediately and will last for two years, comes amid the country's broader efforts to foster new quality productive forces, advance the building of a unified national market, and develop a high-standard socialist market economy.

The reforms are set to be carried out in major cities such as Zhengzhou, Chongqing and Chengdu as well as in designated areas of Beijing and several provinces, including Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian, Hunan, and Guangdong.

In these pilot regions, efforts will be made to remove institutional barriers hindering the free flow and efficient allocation of production factors, and to ensure that economic entities under all forms of ownership have equal access to production factors, fair participation in market competition, and equal legal protection.

"The pilot regions will play a pioneering, exemplary role in addressing challenges in the current factor market, and they will lay the foundations to seek experience that can be replicated and scaled," Li Chunlin, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference following the announcement of the initiative.

The reforms will also empower local economies by strengthening the supply of production factors, and by stimulating endogenous momentum and innovative vitality, Li added.

China has been working to promote the market-based allocation of production factors, covering traditional factors such as land, labor and capital, while accelerating the development of technology and data factor markets.

In April 2020, China issued a guideline to improve the market-based allocation of production factors. In January 2022, it released a document outlining a roadmap through 2025 to deepen reforms in this regard.