The governor of Guangdong Province, China's economic powerhouse, has pledged to reduce government interference in private businesses while offering more substantial support for scientific and technological innovation and market access in an exclusive interview with China Media Group.
Wang Weizhong, the provincial governor and deputy secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Guangdong Provincial Committee, elaborated on the province's strategic plans for fostering a healthy and high-quality development of its vibrant private economy.
Guangdong's GDP hit 14.16 trillion yuan (1.91 trillion U.S. dollars) last year, and it is the largest province in China's economy, accounting for 10.5 percent of the national tally.
The southern province - home to manufacturing hubs like Shenzhen and Guangzhou - aims to implement a policy of "no unnecessary interference, immediate support when needed" for private enterprises.
"We will earnestly implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important speech at the symposium on private enterprises by working unswervingly both to consolidate and develop the public sector and to encourage, support and guide development of the non-public sector', and making good use of the 'Enterprise Policy One-Stop Platform.' We pledge full support for the healthy and sustainable growth of the private sector, guided by the principle of 'no unnecessary interference, immediate support when needed,'" he said.
To address the concerns of private enterprises, Guangdong is reforming its business environment to be more market-oriented, law-based, and internationally competitive.
Private-owned enterprises are now permitted to participate in major infrastructure projects, including nuclear power, high-speed rail, and wind energy.
"We will continue to remove explicit and implicit barriers to market access and ensure that private enterprises have equal access to factors of production and fair participation in market competition in accordance with the law. We will launch special actions to standardize law enforcement involving enterprises and improve the mechanism for settling overdue accounts owed to enterprises, so that enterprises can operate and develop with confidence," Wang said.
This year, Guangdong will further strengthen the role of enterprises in technological innovation by opening major technological infrastructure to private companies.
The governor outlined plans to nurture 50 science and technology leading corporations, 100 industrial chain leaders, 1,000 single-item manufacturing champions, and 10,000 specialized, refined, characteristic, and innovative enterprises.
"We will support private enterprises participating in major national and provincial scientific and technological breakthroughs and fundamental frontier technology research and implement policy measures to accelerate the construction of a modern pilot-scale experiment platform system. We will pave the way for more new technologies, new industries, and new business patterns, and build private enterprises into a powerful force in developing new quality productive force to create a world-class enterprise group, and inject strong impetus for Guangdong to take the lead in promoting Chinese Modernization," he said.
China's Guangdong pledges concrete, timely support to private sector
