Creating a world-class, market-oriented, rule-of-law, and internationalized business environment is an important measure for a country to enhance its comprehensive competitiveness. As China's largest economic province, Guangdong has steadily promoted the construction of a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, rule-of-law-based, and internationalized, striving to create broad development space and fertile investment soil for various business entities. According to the latest evaluation results from the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce's "10,000 Private Enterprises Evaluate Business Environment," Guangdong's business environment evaluation score ranks second nationally, with the number of entrepreneur reputation votes ranking first. The favorable business environment has attracted over 20 million business entities to establish roots in Guangdong.
As of September 3, Guangdong had 20.0019 million registered business entities, a net increase of 953,100 from the end of 2024, growing by 5% and accounting for one-tenth of the national total. The total number of business entities remains first in the country. Guangdong has cumulatively attracted over 350 Fortune 500 companies to establish operations, with 17,000 newly established foreign-invested enterprises, representing a year-on-year growth of 32.7%. Business entity development shows a positive trend of "simultaneous growth in quantity and quality, quality improvement and upgrading, and enhanced confidence."
However, during Guangdong's business environment construction process, bottlenecks and obstacles still exist in market order, factor support, and enterprise-related services. Issues include the incomplete formation of fair competition market order, weak links in factor support, the need for optimization and improvement in enterprise service quality and efficiency, the continued need to strengthen intellectual property protection, and insufficient departmental coordination in protecting foreign investment rights and interests. These issues constrain the province's modern industrial system construction to some extent.
Against this backdrop, on the morning of September 9, Guangdong Province convened a special meeting on accelerating modern industrial system construction (focusing on market-oriented, rule-of-law, and internationalized business environment). The meeting focused on improving Guangdong's business environment, providing direction for continuously improving and optimizing the world-class market-oriented, rule-of-law, and internationalized business environment.
**Creating a "More Predictable" Business Environment**
Business environment equals competitiveness and marks a region's economic development "soft power." Riding the spring breeze of reform and opening-up, pioneers like He Xiangjian and Ren Zhengfei seized opportunities, transforming from "small business owners" to major entrepreneurs. Over 40 years, generation after generation of entrepreneurs have chosen Guangdong to start their businesses and build wealth. "East, west, north, south, and center - go to Guangdong to get rich" once became synonymous with its economic soft power and attractiveness.
With leading enterprises driving countless small and medium enterprises, Guangdong has gradually formed an "ecological rainforest" of coordinated industrial development. Today, Guangdong possesses all 31 major manufacturing categories, with 15 industries ranking first nationally in scale. According to the recently released "2025 China's Top 500 Private Enterprises" list and research report by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, Guangdong had 51 companies on the list, ranking among the top provinces.
What attracts "bosses" to start businesses and develop in Guangdong, this "pioneer" of reform and opening-up? The story of entrepreneur He Xiaopeng might help people understand this question well. At this year's National People's Congress, He Xiaopeng, Chairman of XPeng Inc., expressed his gratitude to Guangdong through media: "Thank you, Guangdong. It was Guangdong's fertile soil of technological innovation that incubated XPeng and firmly supported XPeng during its most difficult times."
He Xiaopeng chose Guangdong for both of his entrepreneurial ventures. Before founding XPeng Inc., He Xiaopeng had created UC Mobile, but faced difficulties in the early stages and was on the verge of bankruptcy. At that time, Guangzhou provided the company with 100,000 yuan in funding, helping UC survive two months of critical period. Subsequently, Guangdong continued providing support during XPeng Inc.'s development. "It's like someone saying they'll find a doctor to save you whenever you need it, even before you enter the ICU. This makes us feel incredibly warm," He Xiaopeng said.
Following new energy vehicles, this year, a batch of AI and robotics star companies including Unitree Robotics, Zhiyuan Robotics, and Deeproute have successively established operations in Guangdong, with the phenomenon of tech unicorns "flying southeast" once again occurring in Guangdong. Unlike the past when companies settled due to Guangdong's strong supply chain advantages, this time, what attracts star tech companies are the application scenario advantages and favorable business environment here.
Currently, starting a company in Guangdong takes less than one working day, compressed from the previous 35 days, with 98% of business registration procedures completed online. In an atmosphere of fair competition, the concept of "seek the market, not the mayor" has taken deep root in Guangdong.
In the first eight months of this year, the province established 2.1269 million new business entities, with 414,600 new "four new economy" enterprises, accounting for 37.92% of total new enterprises province-wide. New "digital economy" enterprises reached 167,600, a significant year-on-year increase of 25.41%. The province has 230,000 registered foreign-invested enterprises, growing by 6.97%. The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has become the "preferred destination" for foreign investment, with the nine mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area establishing 18,500 new foreign-invested enterprises.
For business entities, a better business environment must be a "more predictable" environment. Only with predictability will they dare to place their careers in this environment to create, expand, and grow. This requires institutional construction and rule of law to bring more "predictability."
Institutional construction runs through all aspects of optimizing the business environment, and rule of law is the best business environment. Behind the series of growth figures mentioned above is direct proof of Guangdong's continuously optimized market-oriented business environment, improved rule-of-law business environment, and accelerated enhancement of internationalized business environment.
In recent years, Guangdong has successively promulgated regulations on optimizing business environment, the nation's first legislation on protecting foreign investment rights and interests, with all 12 prefecture-level and above cities in the province issuing local regulations and decisions on optimizing business environment. Initiatives such as "judicial escort for high-quality development of private economy" and "innovative bankruptcy trial models for small and medium enterprises" have been promoted nationwide.
Today, the old saying "East, west, north, south, and center - go to Guangdong to get rich" has evolved into "East, west, north, south, and center - go to Guangdong to develop." Observers believe that the change from "getting rich" to "developing" signifies that Guangdong provides private economy and foreign investment not only with entrepreneurial environment and wealth creation opportunities, but also a high-quality development model that creates value and opportunities for society and the times.
**Creating a More "Refined" World-Class Business Environment**
Great undertakings must start with details. A better business environment must be one with more "refined" characteristics.
Li Weichuang, President of Guangzhou Ligong Industrial Co., Ltd., noted that in recent years, the country has introduced many policies supporting private enterprise development, but these policies are generally led by different departments such as technology, industry and information technology, and development and reform. "For enterprises, to fully understand what policy support they can obtain often requires coordination through multiple departments, resulting in long processes and low efficiency," Li Weichuang said.
At this year's "New Spring First Meeting" provincial high-quality development conference, Guangdong announced the establishment of a Private Economy Development Bureau, a department dedicated to solving practical problems. "Through this unified window, policies and services for private enterprises can be coordinated and handled directly, enabling both private enterprises and government departments to do things more efficiently and effectively," Li Weichuang said.
Wu Houfeng, General Manager of Guangdong Zhengchao Electric Co., Ltd., also mentioned issues regarding policy implementation execution, frankly stating that some policies still have "last mile" problems in grassroots implementation, resulting in weak enterprise satisfaction, especially regarding complex procedures for subsidy applications.
To solve many "last mile" problems for private enterprises, all 21 prefecture-level and above cities in Guangdong have established leading groups for optimizing business environment work, introducing iterative business environment reform policies based on local conditions. The Guangdong Provincial Market Supervision Administration issued the first provincial-level internal guidance for reviewing fiscal reward and subsidy policies, formulated compliance guidelines for e-commerce operators regarding anti-unfair competition, and the "one-stop acceptance, one-time completion" mechanism for enterprise credit repair received commendation from the State Council.
Observing the highlights of business environment reforms in various regions, it's evident that world-class business environment is actually more reflected in "refined" services. For example, from humanoid robots to brain-computer interface devices to AI large models, a series of tech innovations from Hangzhou, Zhejiang have frequently made headlines this year. This is inseparable from the government's "responsive to demands" approach while maintaining "non-interference when unnecessary."
To achieve "responsive to demands," Hangzhou has made considerable explorations: implementing a "chain leader system" with supporting teams, plans, and policy support; implementing a "technology commissioner system" to provide solutions for enterprise difficulties. To achieve "non-interference when unnecessary," Hangzhou has further deepened "comprehensive integrated" administrative law enforcement reform, focusing on breaking multi-departmental, repetitive, and inefficient enterprise inspections.
Observers believe that currently, Guangdong still needs to learn from other provinces in this regard, optimizing government services, establishing cross-departmental and cross-regional normalized communication platforms in response to enterprise demands, and improving policy implementation efficiency.
In the new round of industrial and technological revolution, government "refined" services are crucial. For example, at the end of last year, Guangzhou Huangpu, through an innovative service model of "one platform + two channels + three lists + four-level coordination," enabled Guangdong Hengrui Pharmaceutical's ruikaximab first batch shipment to be advanced by over 70 days, completing the process from inspection to certification in just 5 days, making it onto hospital pharmacy shelves before the Spring Festival.
While the outside world discusses Shanghai and Suzhou's flexible service mechanisms and professional government service teams in biopharmaceuticals, Huangpu has been quietly changing. Today, Huangpu District Market Supervision Administration's new drug application service center is connecting upward with authorized resources to Huangpu to accelerate enterprise applications, and providing downstream preliminary services, having people familiar with regulations, understanding industry practices, and technically competent listen to enterprise demands and find solutions.
Currently, facing numerous uncertainties in global economic growth, how can Guangdong continue attracting global "bosses" to favor Guangdong by optimizing its business environment? The Guangdong Provincial People's Congress suggests that Guangdong should continuously create a fair and efficient market environment, taking multiple measures to enhance Greater Bay Area market integration; continuously improve an open, transparent, and predictable legal environment, timely addressing regulatory gaps in new business formats and models; continuously optimize a convenient and efficient government service environment, actively building a business environment adapted to leading industries, and promoting the transformation of government services toward personalized, precise, and value-added services.