China vows to increase transparency in business supervision

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China said it is stepping up monitoring efforts of businesses by increasing the transparency and standardization of procedures.

Minister of State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) Zhang Mao said during a press conference on Thursday that the ministry will no long carry out annual inspections for every enterprise. Instead, the new monitoring approach randomly selects both the enterprises that will be inspected and the delegates that will oversee the inspections.

“Results of the inspections will be published to increase transparency. We are currently working to better standardize the inspection process as well as the inspection results that will be published,” Zhang said.

The number of business registrations has grown rapidly since reforms in the system began in 2014. Currently new market entities have reached 52,000 on a daily basis and over 16,600 business registrations are recorded every day, official data showed.

“Businesses can now apply for their licenses before the permits, a measure that will make the process a lot faster by eliminating redundant procedures,” said Zhang.

Applications for online business licenses have also been made available in over 30 provinces.

With market expansion accelerating, Zhang said new monitoring measures could ensure fair competition and business development by encouraging more enterprises to publish annual reports on their own. In the process, they will help the market evaluate corporate credibility and minimize risks.

Under the old inspection system, corporations were asked to send in their annual reports to SAIC for approval.

According to SAIC, over 90 percent of corporations have published reports since the new rules were put in place. That's about seven percentage points better than the previous scheme.