Recently, The Chinese State Council officially approved the comprehensive pilot program in Nanjing, Shenyang, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Chengdu to further open up the service sector. This is the first time that the pilot program has been implemented in a sub-provincial city since Beijing was approved to build a national comprehensive demonstration zone for wider opening-up of the service sector in 2020. Nanjing has become the only city in Jiangsu Province that combines the two major national opening-up strategies of "comprehensive pilot zone for expanding opening-up of service industry and pilot free trade Zone".
The comprehensive pilot program for further opening up of the service sector is another major plan made by the CPC Central Committee and The State Council to implement high-level opening up after the strategy of pilot free trade zones. It has been carried out seven years of innovative exploration. On January 10, the Ministry of Commerce issued the "Comprehensive Pilot Plan for expanding the opening up of Nanjing's Service Industry" (the "Plan" for short). The plan has 104 tasks covering 10 service sectors, including science and technology, education, finance, health care, information and data, human resources, law, culture and business.
What changes will be brought to Nanjing after the implementation of the 104 tasks? Zhang Zhichao, director of Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, said that The State Council chose Nanjing to carry out a three-year pilot program, which will give Nanjing a new mission and opportunity of high-level opening to the outside world from the national level. At the same time, Nanjing was granted 104 high-gold pilot policies, giving Nanjing more opening functions and space for trial. It has provided strong support for building Nanjing into a leading new highland of institutional opening in China, accelerating the construction of services and building a pilot demonstration area of new development pattern.
There are 22 items in this category: the construction of pilot tasks with high gold content that can be directly landed. For example, "Support the establishment of human Genetic Resources Management (Nanjing) branch center", "relax the management of small doses of special chemical agents for pharmaceutical research and development", etc., will accelerate the industrial agglomeration of pharmaceutical research and development, clinical research and other industries, and help the innovation and development of the whole biomedical industry chain in Nanjing; "Relax the application requirements for foreign companies to set up investment companies", "foreign invested travel agencies to engage in outbound tourism business", will further relax the access conditions for foreign investment, promote stability of foreign investment work; "Support multinational enterprise groups to establish cross-border two-way RMB capital pools" and "develop a bank settlement account system integrating local and foreign currencies" will promote cross-border capital flow and settlement of enterprises, help attract more headquarters of multinational corporations, and promote more enterprises to expand international investment and trade business.
Supporting Nanjing's pilot tasks of opening up and exploring, there were nearly 20 articles in this category. For example, "Strengthen the construction of national TCM service export base, expand the export of TCM service", will strengthen the city's new advantages in the development of service trade, help strive for the national service trade innovation development demonstration zone; "Explore allowing qualified Hong Kong and Macao law firms to form partnership law firms with mainland law firms", which will enhance international service capabilities. There are more than 20 of these policies and measures in the pilot free trade Zone, which will further magnify the effect of free trade, expand the application scenarios of institutional innovation in the pilot free trade zone, and accelerate the institutional opening exploration of standard international high-level economic and trade rules in the city. "Standardized exploration of intellectual property securitization" will improve the financing capacity of technology enterprises, promote the transformation of results and innovative development.
"Compared with the other five approved pilot cities, Nanjing's plan focuses more on scientific and technological innovation, more on the integration of the 'two industries' (advanced manufacturing and modern service industry), more on industrial characteristics, and more on platform demonstration. Nanjing Bureau of Commerce relevant person said.
Looking through the list of 104 tasks, Nanjing is different in several ways. A "new model" of institutional opening. Among the various scenarios and modes of opening up the service industry to the outside world, the elderly care institutions invested by service providers from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan will be supported to carry out the pilot project of establishing internal nursing and medical institutions, and more well-known elderly care institutions from Hong Kong and Macao will be introduced to the city to provide health care services in line with international high-end standards. Support foreign-invested travel agencies established in Nanjing to engage in outbound tourism business outside Taiwan, support cooperation with overseas institutions to develop cross-border medical insurance products and carry out international medical insurance settlement, which will bring more diversified and personalized choices for people to travel abroad and purchase international medical insurance.
It is also clear in the Plan that the application conditions for the establishment of investment companies by foreign investors should be relaxed, the total assets of foreign investors in the previous year should be reduced from US $400 million to no less than US $200 million, and the requirements on the number of foreign-invested enterprises established by foreign investors in China should be abolished. After the implementation of the policy, the policy will be different from that of Beijing and Shanghai and the cities that have not received the approval of the pilot of expanding the opening up of the service industry. It will help Nanjing speed up attracting foreign investors to set up investment companies or headquarters in Ning.
Green development "new heights". According to the Plan, it is necessary to focus on the integrated development strategy of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Yangtze River Delta, give full play to Nanjing's comprehensive advantages in scientific and technological innovation, industrial collaboration and market space, support enterprises to jointly tackle key core technologies such as the "bottleneck" underlying technologies, basic technologies and general technologies, and gather global industrial innovation factors. We will build industrial innovation hubs with global competitiveness.
The "new engine" of scientific and technological innovation. Nanjing will make every effort to start the science and technology innovation engine, actively build a national regional science and technology innovation center, and build itself into an innovation city with global competitiveness. We will give full play to the technological innovation advantages of Jiangbei New District, accelerate the introduction and construction of international top professional service institutions and incubators, and provide financial, policy and fund support to excellent incubators, so as to improve the overall service capability of scientific and technological innovation.
"New path" for the integration of the two industries. Nanjing is the only city in the Yangtze River Delta that ranks top of the top 100 cities in manufacturing industry and superposition the pilot city of expanding opening up of service industry. It is the most basic experimental field to carry out "integration of the two industries" among the new batch of 6 pilot cities. The Plan focuses on key manufacturing industries with advantages in Nanjing, such as integrated circuit, intelligent automobile, steel, petrochemical, biomedicine and intelligent equipment, and puts forward 13 pilot tasks for the integration of the two industries. At the same time, the special fund for the integrated development of the "two industries" of Jiangsu Province and Nanjing City will be established to provide financial support for the demonstration enterprises and industrial parks of integrated development.
After the pilot implementation becomes the national pilot, how to ensure the implementation of 104 tasks? Nanjing will prepare to hold a series of special investment activities to expand the opening of the service sector. Taking the pilot approval as an opportunity, we plan to hold a special exhibition on the opening up of Nanjing's service industry in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea to promote Nanjing's opening environment and policies and measures to global multinational corporations, high-end service enterprises, trade and investment institutions, and send a signal of high-level opening up of Nanjing to attract more global high-end service resources to gather in Nanjing. It will help Nanjing gather advanced resources of global service industry, foster a number of high-quality new industries and new subjects, and enhance the level of urban opening.
"Here, we also need to emphasize the new advantages of Nanjing's business environment." The relevant person in charge of Nanjing Bureau of Commerce told the reporter that Nanjing regards the optimization of business environment as an important measure to transform government functions, serve market players and stabilize economic growth. In recent years, Nanjing has successively issued four "100" policies to optimize business environment, and has been awarded the national benchmark city of business environment for two consecutive years.
The plan combines the opportunities of opening up the service industry with the advantages of Nanjing's business environment reform and innovation, focuses on the liberalization of the flow of market factors, promotes trade and investment facilitation, and promotes the rule of law in government services. It also proposed to support foreign negotiations on expanding air traffic rights arrangements with relevant countries and regions on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, encourage airlines to launch capacity in Nanjing Lukou International Airport, and promote Nanjing Lukou International Airport to build a regional hub airport. In the future, more international and domestic high-quality air routes may be approved. To support Nanjing drug inspection institutions and supervision and administration departments to strengthen the team in accordance with the requirements of the first drug import port evaluation standards, strengthen the construction of inspection capacity and supervision and management capacity, and attract a number of internationally renowned inspection and testing institutions to settle in Nanjing. To support the establishment of a Nanjing Branch Center for the Management of human genetic Resources, carry out the approval and filing of the management of human genetic resources for designated regions, greatly shorten the administrative approval cycle of international cooperation projects involving the export application of human genetic resources and human genetic resources, and accelerate the domestic and foreign listing and financing process of drug research and development enterprises involving human genetic resources. Nanjing will also explore a new mode of applying for work permits for foreign talents during the start-up period, allowing overseas talents and their teams to apply for work permits through incubators, maker Spaces and other entrepreneurial vehicles during the start-up period, so as to lower the threshold for international talents to start businesses. The pilot bank settlement account system integrating local and foreign currencies will be carried out to provide high-quality and efficient bank account services for more than 10,000 foreign trade operators and more than 5,000 foreign-invested enterprises in Nanjing.
It is reported that in the three-year pilot period, Nanjing will focus on the positioning of regional central city, relax the industry access restrictions, deepen the reform of key areas, and improve the international competitiveness and development level of the service industry. It will not only play an exemplary role in the national all-round initiative opening up and the open and innovative development of the service industry. It will also bring substantial benefits to enterprises and people in terms of investment convenience, vocational training, customs clearance convenience, culture and education, tourism, health care and old-age care payment, etc.
