Together with China's first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Chongqing in the west region has been included in the list of pilot cities for the business environment.

According to the General Office of the State Council in November, the first batch of pilot cities for the business environment through innovative measures will be set up by the end of March 2021. 

A better business environment lies in institutional innovation, where the reform in streamlining administration and delegating power, improving regulation, and upgrading services play the key. The continuous strengthening of streamlining administration and delegating power leads to more efficient administrative approval, thus bringing convenience to businesses.

Based on 11 areas of business regulation in Doing Business by the World Bank, Chongqing has implemented negative list management of market access in starting a business. It has also introduced an online application to start a business and other facilitation measures, where 98.1% of business matters are handled online. For example, taking cross-border trade, the overall shipping time from Port of Chongqing to Port of Shanghai has been reduced by 40% on average. Furthermore, regulation is seeing increasing effectiveness, especially in food safety.

Chongqing has established a smart regulation platform that displays the dynamics of enterprises' information and their owners and stakeholders, spot checks, daily supervision and inspection, administrative punishments, and public evaluation. Through data comparison, quantitative algorithms, and graphical displays, market regulators can correlate ranking and regulatory density effectiveness by category as needed to form reports.

Also, empowered by artificial intelligence, market regulators may score market players. The lower the score, the higher the risk. Companies with lower scores are the focus of regulation. Besides, satisfaction continues to improve in service. Over the past year, Chongqing has been creating better and efficient government services. In particular, "Yukuaiban," a service platform of Chongqing Municipal People's Government, can be available on mobile phones, personal computers, service windows, and self-service machines.

So far, the service platform has 20 million registered users. More than 140 million items have been handled. 97% of municipal administrative items can be handled just once. 95% of the items can be handled online.

In addition, Chongqing also connects its government service platform with Sichuan's government service platform to achieve inter-provincial government services. The first 97 frequent items have been accepted and handled on both platforms.

To make its institutional innovation results replicable and promotable nationwide, Chongqing will continue to build a market-based, law-based, and international business environment from government service, market, factor, and the rule of law.