Back to China now. A senior government official said Thursday that China will allow more market access by simplifying the business registration process and increasing research and services for small companies. The minister of the State Administration of Industry and Commerce -- Zhang Mao -- also said that the government will boost monitoring efforts by improving the transparency and standardization of procedures in order to better ensure market competitiveness. Ren Xueqian has the story.

The Chinese government says the number of business registrations has grown rapidly since reforms in the system were started in 2014. Officials say the relaxation of requirements for business license applications has led to lower startup costs and more efficiency.

ZHANG MAO, MINISTER STATE ADMINISTRATION OF INDUSTRY & COMMERCE "Currently, the growth of market entities has reached 52-thousand on a daily basis and over 16-thousand businesses registrations are recorded in a single day. Businesses can now apply for their licenses before the permits, a measure that will make the process a lot faster by eliminating redundant procedures."

Applications for online business licenses have also been made available in over 30 provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions. With market expansion accelerating, the government says it has also streamlined new supervision to ensure fair competition and business development.

ZHANG MAO, MINISTER STATE ADMINISTRATION OF INDUSTRY & COMMERCE "We will no longer 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."

In the old inspection system, corporations were asked to send in their annual reports for approval to the State Administration of Industry and Commerce. Under the new policy, Zhang said the government will encourage businesses to publish annual reports on their own, and in the process, help the market evaluate corporate credibility. Zhang said 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 regime. Ren Xueqian, CGTN, Beijing.