How long will it take to accomplish a business license for a potential enterprise in Dongguan? Recently, three enterprises including Jianke Internet Hospital obtained their business licenses just in one working day after going through the entire process.
“It is amazing that an Internet hospital is able to get the approval for its business license within one working day. The efficiency record of review and approval in the country has been refreshed, which manifests the government’s efficiency, effectiveness and execution.” Among the first to enjoy the reform dividend, Xie Fangmin, CEO of Jianke kept complimenting.
In recent years, Dongguan has been deriving inherent dynamism from reform and practical deeds, conscientiously putting in place the four pilot reform programs the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee deployed to Dongguan, and trying to advancing various reforms through the pilot programs. With the continuous advancement of various forceful reform measures, new scenes characterized by high-quality development emerge at an accelerating rate. High-quality development momentum gathers more rapidly, unleashing entrepreneurial enthusiasm and wisdom among the officials and people across the city.
Connotation Upgrading
Striving to be among the top in the city cluster of the Greater Bay Area.
Recently, Songshan Lake solicits urban (art) sculpture designs in and outside China. Songshan Lake will serve as an example and pioneers urban art museum engineering in the province. Landmark urban sculptures that are with specific themes, features, classy taste and are loved by people will be placed in major road intersections, basketball parks and other important junctions. The industrial park will be built into an art museum. As a result, the quality and connotations of the city will be upgraded. The changes of urban public art will continuously empower the industrial park to lead regional innovation and development.
High-quality development calls for high-quality carrier. To comprehensively improve the city’s bearing capacity and competiveness, Dongguan has officially put in place a three-year action plan to upgrade city quality a year ago. Ten key areas are deployed in the action plan and it is expected that through efforts of three to five years, major leap forward will be achieved in quality and connotation upgrading of the city.
Now, new scenes featuring city quality upgrading can be felt in every corner in Songshan Lake and other towns. 200 projects in ten areas such as construction of city center, intriguing small towns, and beautiful villages are basically completed with an estimated investment of 10.8 billion RMB.
“The past two years has seen increasingly improved supporting facilities and natural environment in Hongmei Town. The once almost-endangered wild amphibious crabs now reemerge in the town.” Speaking of city quality upgrading, Zhang Zhijiang, Chairman of Guangdong Lvtong New Energy Electric Car Science & Technology Co., Ltd. couldn’t help expressing his excitement. He said that he used to have to explain the specific location of Hongmei Town to the candidates at the recruitment fair. But now they just need to say that “it is next to Dongguan West Railway Station, the central area of the city’s beautiful waterfronts”. The confusion of the candidates can then be immediately eliminated.
Considerable investment is required to upgrade city quality and generate substantial output and effectiveness. According to the statistics, aside from the accomplished 200 projects, the city has 353 city quality upgrading projects that are under construction or awaiting construction, with a total investment of about 157.67 billion RMB.
At the conference of city quality upgrading held on August 24, Liang Weidong, Secretary of the Dongguan CPC Municipal Committee expressed that construction of the Greater Bay Area unleashed a second round of opportunity for Guangdong province. He who is able to seize the opportunity presented by the Greater Bay Area will be able to ride the wave to secure high-quality development in re future. To seize the opportunity, Dongguan needs to leverage its geographical advantage and ecological advantage, extending the quality and connotations of the city to a new level.
Dongguan will strive to be the top among the cities in the Greater Bay Area by reinforcing its competitiveness through city quality upgrading.
Expanding Space
Enhancing the bearing capacity of the city through internal optimization and external connectivity.
Benefiting from city upgrading and renovation, the once “dirty, disorderly and inferior” pig farm with an area of 90-odds mu (equivalent of about 60,000 square meters) was transformed into a modern industrial park. The transformation not only beautifies the city but also delivers taxes growing by multiple times, winning the acclamation of the people.
Such changes are taking place in Hengtang Community of Tangxia Town, Dongguan. The community is committed to strengthening town-village interconnected and coordinated development and driving high-quality development by capitalizing on city upgrading.
Liang Weidong said, “at present, Dongguan has moved from a stage where city development is driven by industry to a new one where city leads industrial development. With planning guiding, city upgrading and carrier support, Dongguan will be built into a modern city with greater bearing capacity, aggregation capability and competitiveness.” To optimize and expand city space, Dongguan has intensified the role of planning guiding and management and control. It has improved space planning system and strengthened space management and control capacity in accordance with such requirements as intensive and effective production space, livable and moderate living space, and ecological space with green mountains and lucid water.
Forceful advancement of city upgrading has emerged as important means to stimulate city transformation and industrial upgrading. The upgrading is different from minor renovation of the three-old renovation (old town, old factories and old villages) in the past. By highlighting government-led, synergy of connected areas and industries, Dongguan is renovating and upgrading the old industrial areas in the towns and districts and lettings in the urban village. As a result, the original fragmented land utilization becomes a thing of the past and there emerges a batch of modern “industrial community” and “innovation community” that reflect clear industrial core, complete living facilities, distinctive culture, and livable ecology. It is estimated that Dongguan boasts potential renovation area of 460,000 to 660,000, which can spur an investment of hundreds of billions yuan in the future.
Along with the advancement of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area and Guangzhou-Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Corridor, Dongguan grows more resolute in coordinating and building a batch of key development platforms and is forming its engine of in-depth participation in the construction of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area at an accelerating rate.
It can be seen from the map that Binhaiwan Bay Area, Nansha Distict of Guangzhou, Airport City Area and Qianhai Center of Shenzhen jointly form an area with a shape looking like figure “7”. At present, Dongguan is proactively seeking support from higher levels and trying to pack Binhaiwan, Nansha and Qianhai together and incorporate them under unified national and provincial construction planning with concept like “economic corridor and belt”. In so doing, it hopes to realize interconnected development in the region and build Binhaiwan Bay Area into a place that converges high-end intelligent manufacturing industries of home and abroad, an R&D base of strategic and emerging industries, and a pioneering region of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau synergetic development.
In the case of Songshan Lake, Dongguan will focus on improving its innovation capability and particularly bring into play its advantages of highly concentrated research resources and solid foundation of its research institutes. It will work with Hong Kong and Macau to build a fast channel that can quickly transfer science and technology innovation results. It will endeavor to build a demonstration zone of science and technology results transfer and major international science and technology innovation center in Songshan Lake
In addition, Dongguan will also build Neutron Science City by resting on Spallation Neutron Source and develop a waterfront economic zone by utilizing quality resources deriving from Hong Kong and Macau. It will speed up the construction of Dongguan GDH Yinping Cooperative Innovation Zone and integrated free trade zone of the Dongguan Port and Humen Port.
Efficiency Improving
Reform in Dongguan brings new development dividends.
“How soon can the business registration be accomplished?”
“Three working days!” here’s Dongguan’s answer to the question.
In 2012, Dongguan led the country in business system reform. The reform now has gradually expanded from industrial and commercial registration to all the links involved in starting a business. From then on, centering on the three dimensions of processing links, processing timeline, and application materials, Dongguan has launched such measures as cancelling pre-approval, facilitating online processing of all the links involved, and implementing online review and approval. This has led to significant efficiency improvement of starting a business and it generally takes one to three working days to accomplish business registration.
The 2016 Report on the Evaluation of Convenience in Starting Business in Cities of Guangdong released by Guangdong Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce and Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences indicates that among 21 prefecture-level cities, Dongguan ranks second in the province and first among prefecture-level cities in terms of evaluation and ranking of convenience in starting a business.
According to Guangdong Action Plan for Deepening Business System Reform, it is required that all the links involved in starting a business be completed within five working days. Whereas Dongguan recently proposed that it strives to reduce that to three working days, presenting “Dongguan speed”.
Apart from lowering the market access threshold, Dongguan has also headed to a “fast track” in its reform of review and approval services provided for project settlement. The time required for review and approval of social investment projects from prompting project proposal to obtaining construction permit has been shrunk to 45 days from the past 200-odd days. In general, the time required for review and approval of project investment and construction has been reduced by three to six months.
Reform is an on-going process with no end point. Xiao Yafei, Deputy Secretary of Dongguan CPC Municipal Committee and Mayor expressed that Dongguan will draw on advanced domestic experience and seek new breakthroughs in reducing the time required for processing items and reviewing and approving, striving to reduce both by more than 50%. It endeavors to optimize the process of review and approval and establish Dongguan’s brand of reform. “We should make the process less troublesome and allow our people to get things done at one time by going to only one place, enabling our citizens and enterprises to enjoy the benefits of the reform.”
At present, Dongguan, Guangzhou and Huizhou are the three pilot cities of the province’s exclusive reform of review and approval of construction projects. Dongguan will optimize the administration permit of enterprise investment and construction projects as well as public service items, review and approval process and timeline. Among them, the number of processing items of construction projects have been reduced from 162 to 60. Dongguan will closely uphold its target and make efforts accordingly, striving to achieve qualitative breakthroughs in the key links of the key areas. After the reform is completed, government review and approval can be obtained within 26 working days for an enterprise investment project to attain state-owned land and finally the construction permit.
As Liang Weidong put it, Dongguan will focus on building the system and mechanism that drive high-quality economic development and forming the science and technology innovation capability, resource allocation pattern and opening-up pattern that are in line with high-quality development. It will facilitate reform of economic development quality, efficiency, and driving force, speed up the shift from factor-driven to innovation-driven development, and the shift from extensive development to intensive development, blazing a path to high-quality development with Dongguan characteristics.
Offering Suggestions
Putting industrial development quality first.
“Dongguan’s early industrial development is at relatively low end. High-quality development requires constant optimization of industrial structure and pursuit of high-end industrial development. We cannot blindly go after size without putting industrial development quality first, otherwise we will miss out high-quality development.”
Zhu Minghong, specialist research fellow of the Development Research Center of the People's Government of Guangdong Province and Deputy Secretary of the CPC Committee of Guangzhou Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that to achieve high-quality development, Dongguan should be equipped with more reasonable structure and its proportion of high-tech industry and strategic emerging industry cannot be too low. At the same time, it must further optimize its investment structure and consumption structure.
Zhu Minghong believed that Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area not only represents development in the region and it should look for extended development and expansion at home and abroad. In addition to sound industrial foundation and geographic location, Dongguan also boasts strong open management awareness. Moreover, Dongguan has strong manufacturing industry, complete industrial chain and efficient operation mode, which are expected by Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. Its managerial experience can also serve as examples for other cities in the Greater Bay Area. From the above, it can be learned that now Dongguan’s manufacturing industry is facing problem of high-quality development and exploration of excellency. He emphasized that upgrading of manufacturing industry plays an important role in driving high-quality development in Dongguan, and it must suit the development of local economy and society without neglecting the reality.
Source: Nanfang Daily