Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has underlined efforts to implement policies properly in order to help market entities overcome difficulties, as well as deepening reforms to spur market vitality and public creativity.

Li made the remarks during an inspection of the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) on Monday. He also chaired a symposium on the same day.

During his inspection, he learned at the intellectual property office that the average time taken by the patent review process has been cut by one-third compared with five years ago. He said innovation is vital in market competition, and protecting intellectual property is to protect innovation, so efforts must be made to provide government services with higher quality and efficiency to accelerate the application and transformation of innovation and promote industry upgrade.

At a data analysis center of the SAMR, officials said that China's market entities have increased in number from 55 million 10 years ago to 169 million now, while there are more than 110 million self-employed individuals. Li stressed that market entities play important roles in securing employment and maintaining the stable operation of the economy, so officials should deepen reforms and make more preferential policies to nurture and foster market entities.

To better coordinate COVID-19 management with economic and social development, the government should pay attention to the recovery of market entities, especially the micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as self-employed individuals, which are facing difficulties and some new problems due to the COVID-19 impacts, Li said.

To solve their problem, Li emphasized efforts to maintain policy stability and continue implementing the previously-introduced package of policies to stabilize the economy, including cutting taxes and administrative fees, promoting major project constructions supported by financial instruments, and supporting the sustainable development of the platform economy.

He also called to quickly respond to the concerns of market entities, help them with problems relating to labor force, credit funds, raw material supplies and other issues, protect the property rights of various enterprises and boost the confidence of private enterprises so that a quick resumption of work and production after the Spring Festival holiday can be achieved.