On January 3, 2018, Premier Li Keqiang chaired a State Council executive meeting to make arrangements to further optimize the business environment to stimulate the market vitality and social creativity; to step up measures to support basic scientific research to enhance the ability of original innovation.

The meeting pointed out that optimizing the business environment means liberating the productive forces and enhancing the overall competitiveness. The meeting said that both the hard and soft environment are important. Hard environment needs to be improved further, while the soft environment need to have more and more new breakthroughs, so that businesses and the masses will enjoy more benefit. First, the business environment should be further optimized with the streamlining administration and tax and fee reduction as priority. The government must further simply the procedures of administrative review and speed up approval procedures forbusiness start-up, tax payments, application for construction permit, water, electricity and gas services, real estate registration and other matters, further clean up and cancel business service charges and dues and fees to trade associations and chamber of commerce and reduce costs of customs clearance, vigorously slash electricity price, speed up and expand the reform of the "separation of licenses", actively promote the disclosure of the comprehensive supervision and inspection information on the principle of "double random and one open". The government must speed up the establishment of a new regulatory mechanism featuring credit commitments and information disclosure, formulate a black list of unscrupulous and a red list of trustworthy individuals and their management practices, and announce them to the public. Second, the government must strictly protect all kinds of property rights on equal basis in strict accordance with the law, and increase the protection of intellectual property rights. The government must strictly abide by its commitments. The government cannot ignore account of the past governments, treat enterprises unfairly or engage in local protection. The government must ensure that enterprises with different ownership systems will be fairly treated in terms of their licenses, government procurement, science and technology projects and standard-setting, and resolutely investigate and deal with the abuse of administrative power to eliminate and restrict competition. The full implementation of negative list of market access system, the implementation of "a single window and a single form" for business filing and business registration offoreign-funded enterprises Third, the government must learn from international experience and pay close attention to the establishment of a business environment evaluation mechanism that will be gradually implemented throughout the country.

The meeting decided to adhere to the problem-oriented and highlight the key points, to carry out special operations to enhance the handling of building permits and cross-border trade facilitation. The implementation of limited time approval of planning, fire protection, environmental protection and other departments, simplify construction permits and other procedures. The government will establish cross-sector one-time joint inspection mechanism for cross-border trade. and create an internationalized and law-based business environment, provide businesses and the public with convenient services, and further stimulate market vitality and potential for public entrepreneurship and profound innovation.