One-stop shop for paperwork saves time and costs
Beijing authorities have made great efforts to streamline and improve the comprehensive service level of government affairs during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), in a bid to ease the burden on companies, stimulate various market entities and optimize the city’s business environment.
Over the past five years, the authorities have released a series of reforms to benefit both companies and individuals.
One of the measures was the issuance of 36 development plans pertaining to the business environment. The authorities have attached great importance to improving the efficiency of administrative services by streamlining approval procedures and reducing excessive materials.
As a result, more than 70 percent of application materials for administrative approval have been canceled, and the time handling those applications has been greatly shortened.
Since 2019, the Beijing Commission of Planning and Natural Resources, for example, has streamlined its procedures for applying for construction projects with low investment risk. They range from approval and supervision to inspection, acceptance and registration.
The commission also promoted one-stop services in the city’s real estate registration halls in 2019. It enables companies and residents to finish trade, tax and registration at an integrated service provision site.
In March 2020, the commission completed the upgrade of its online service platform that uses technologies such as facial recognition and optical character recognition. It now allows companies to transfer ownership and pay taxes for nonresidential buildings.
To date, all the excessive certificates and repeated materials for administrative approvals have been canceled in local government agencies, public institutions, social organizations and public service providers. Beijing has also regulated 19 certification items for banks and 16 items for companies making Initial Public Offerings.
In the sectors of business opening, project construction, cross-border trade, education and healthcare, offline applications must be dealt with on-site. Online applications should be finished within half a day, according to local officials.
The authorities have used new technologies such as big data, cloud computing and blockchain to set up online government service platforms. At the official website of the Beijing government, a total of 20.4 million individual users and 2.1 million corporate users have registered at the service sector of administrative affairs.
The official website has international versions in eight languages including English, Japanese, German and French. Information covers investment, education, work, life and tourism.
Moreover, four mobile applications — the city’s Beijingtong app and its WeChat, Alipay and Baidu accounts — have each provided more than 1,000 government services and over 300 services related to companies.
Self-service terminals are available at a total of 550 service centers and bank outlets across the city. Beijing has also rolled out e-certificates for residence permits, offering convenience to the city’s 5 million permanent residents who do not hold a Beijing hukou (household registration).
The construction of comprehensive government service halls over the past few years has promoted one-stop services at all levels. The halls can now handle more than 95 percent of city-level government services.
Also, the authorities have encouraged the city’s banks to provide services that integrate government matters with finance. An initial loan service center, for instance, has been established to help the financing of companies. As of now, it has approved loans worth about 29.4 billion yuan ($4.5 billion).
The center has also provided small and micro-sized businesses with special online services related to pandemic control, and the resumption of work and production.