China aims to maintain 20,000 new businesses registering on a daily basis this year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at a press conference after the conclusion of the third session of the 13th National People's Congress on Thursday, adding that this is a key indicator of China's economic vitality. 

To fulfill the goal, Li said China will continue to deepen market reform and optimize the country's business environment, while carrying out large stimulus packages to help enterprises, particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs), to survive the blow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"What comes first is that we keep market entities alive," Li emphasized, adding that the stimulus packages are mainly to bail out the market players and stimulate their market vitality, and it must be ensured that these are used for enterprises and small businesses.

Where there is life, there is future, Li said. As long as the 120 million market entities in China continue to function and keep active, we will have the future, Li stressed.

"It is necessary to create a market-oriented, rule-of-law, internationalized business environment, and eliminate those unreasonable rules and regulations so that market entities can compete fairly. This kind of measure seems intangible, but it can create tangible wealth," Li added. 

It is also important to allow new businesses to emerge, said Li, citing new businesses that have responded well to the outbreak, such as online shopping, express delivery and remote operations.

New businesses are emerging one after another, Li said, which is related to the policies China has carried out over the years including deepening supply-side structural reforms, promotion of high-quality development and development of mass entrepreneurship and innovation. 

"We value SMEs, that does not mean we do not pay attention to large enterprises. We still hope that large enterprises and SMEs will coexist and prosper together, and we expect that some SMEs will grow into large enterprises in the future. This year we not only have to look at how well relief policies are used, but also whether the improvement of the business environment is obvious, which can produce a multiplier effect," Li said.

(Cover via VCG)