Shenzhen has made steady headway in building a pilot demonstration area of socialism with Chinese characteristics, with the first batch of 40 pilot reform measures fully implemented, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said at a press conference in Beijing yesterday.
The city is tasked with piloting comprehensive authorized reforms and has been granted with greater autonomy in the reform of important areas and key links, according to a document jointly issued by the General Offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council in October 2020.
Meng Wei, a spokesperson for the NDRC, said yesterday that reform results have been manifesting themselves in important areas and key links for over a year, particularly in market-based allocation of production factors, business environment optimization, technological innovation, higher-level open economy, public services and urban space governance.
A total of 302 listed companies have been added since the registration-based initial public offerings (IPOs) system was piloted on ChiNext — the country’s NASDAQ-style board of growth enterprises — in Shenzhen Stock Exchange, with equity financing totaling 543.9 billion yuan (US$85.33 billion).
Shenzhen also led the way in piloting contractual-type fund business registration, attracting a number of high-quality private equity funds firms to settle in the city.
According to the NDRC, the city’s bankruptcy system reform has yielded impressive results. Shenzhen courts have received 1,084 individual bankruptcy applications, with 89 cases concluded. Mutual recognition has been achieved with the Hong Kong courts in a number of corporate bankruptcy proceedings.
The reform of new-type intellectual property rights (IPR) protection has been advanced in an orderly manner. The country’s first IPR administrative ban went into effect in Shenzhen, and for the first time, articles generated by AI were recognized as enjoying copyright protection by judicial determination.
Shenzhen has also set out criteria for identifying highly skilled and top-notch foreign talents and issued more than 440 high-end foreign talent confirmation letters for qualified talents.
Professionals in the fields of taxation, construction, urban planning and tourism services from Hong Kong and Macao have been able to practice in Shenzhen without having to take qualification exams on the mainland.
So far, 69 Hong Kong and Macao tax professionals and six joint venture tax agent firms have completed administrative registration in the city, and 324 Hong Kong construction and 29 urban planning professionals have gone through practice registration.
Additionally, a batch of urgently needed imported medicines and medical devices has been approved for use in the city. A total of 118 doctors from Hong Kong and Macao obtained practice certificates and 37 Hong Kong doctors acquired a senior professional title in Shenzhen.
The city has also seen the successful financing of the first batch of projects under the framework of climate investment and financing reform system.
Meng said the State Council has given Shenzhen permission to temporarily amend and implement the relevant provisions of four administrative regulations. Seven new regulations including personal bankruptcy and data regulations were enacted, and legislation in a number of emerging fields such as AI was accelerated.
“We will work with relevant parties to guide Shenzhen in summarizing its pilot reforms and continuing to deepen reform in order to yield more results,” Meng said.