What is the core task of the construction of the Yangtze River Delta Pilot Free Trade Zone? The answer is institutional innovation.
Then, how should institutional innovation be further promoted?
Business environment stimulates market vitality
"By 2025, the regional resource elements of the Yangtze River Delta will flow in an orderly and free manner, administrative barriers will be gradually eliminated, and a unified and open market system will be basically established", which is the goal of the Three Year Action Plan for Building an International First class Business Environment in the Yangtze River Delta.
As the first pilot free trade zone in China, Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has been actively exploring the field of business environment construction.
"For example, the new port area has innovatively established 18 characteristic business environment indicator systems, and commissioned a third-party organization to carry out the assessment. The results show that the business environment of the new port area has entered the first echelon in the world as a whole, with indicators such as starting enterprises and handling construction permits approaching full score." At the Institutional Innovation Forum of the Yangtze River Delta Pilot Free Trade Zone held in Nanjing recently, Zhang Nan, Deputy Director of the Institutional Innovation and Risk Prevention Division of the New Lingang Area of Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, disclosed that, "We have innovatively put forward the concept of integrated reform of the decentralization, management and service system, and comprehensively reduced the level of approval. At present, 90% of the administrative approval items have been reduced from the original three and four levels to less than two levels. Over the past three years, the newly registered enterprises in the new port area have increased by 54.5% year on year. The excellent business environment has become an important strength to attract high-quality resource elements at home and abroad."
The spillover effect of institutional innovation in the Free Trade Zone is increasingly apparent. In the first three quarters of this year, foreign direct investment (FDI) in Shanghai was US $18.568 billion, up 11.3% year on year. By the end of September, Shanghai had set up 877 regional headquarters of multinational companies and 523 foreign R&D centers.
"Shanghai's attraction to foreign capital stems from the continuous optimization of the business environment, which cannot be separated from China's big strategy and big measures of institutional opening." Zhao Beiwen, deputy director and researcher of the Institute of World Economics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the International Finance News that Shanghai could build an international first-class business environment around three aspects: constantly expanding open areas, accelerating the creation of space carriers, and focusing on providing quality services.
"From focusing on the scale of attracting foreign investment to focusing on the quality of attracting foreign investment, China is opening up to the outside world more and more vigorously, and its fields are also expanding." Zhao Beiwen said that Shanghai's proposal in the relevant planning to "guide more foreign investment to high-tech, high value-added, high knowledge content industries" will inevitably put forward higher requirements for Shanghai's investment environment and business environment.
Zhao Beiwen stressed that marketization is the basis of a first-class business environment. In order to make the "invisible hand" of the market play a role, we must deepen the reform of "decentralization, management and service". "For example, whether enterprises can obtain credit without administrative interference in the initial financing process; whether the government can protect the legitimate rights and interests of small and medium-sized investors in the process of enterprise operation. With regard to the elevation standard international economic and trade rules, Shanghai will strengthen the work of investment promotion, business stability, and let foreign-funded enterprises dare to invest, operate with ease, and become bigger and stronger in Shanghai." Zhao Beiwen said, in addition, after foreign investment, Shanghai must fully protect its intellectual property rights in the later operation, so that it can develop from introducing single projects to introducing upstream and downstream associated enterprises, and achieve "cluster" investment.
Pan Helin, co director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of the International Joint Business School of Zhejiang University, told the International Finance News that it was foreseeable that more and more foreign capital would be invested in the manufacturing industry. The technological and resource advantages of foreign enterprises would help domestic traditional industrial products to increase added value, extend the industrial chain, and promote the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry.
Pathfinder industry and open innovation path
Accelerate the institutional innovation of "science and innovation+industry", promote the institutional opening of international economic and trade rules based on elevation standards, and each trade pilot zone in the Yangtze River Delta acts as a "pressure testing ground".
In Anhui, more than 100 innovation cases have been explored, 17 of which are the first in China. Among them, Feng Xiaobin, the director of the System Innovation Division of the Administrative Committee of Hefei Area of Anhui Pilot Free Trade Zone, revealed that Hefei was the first national laboratory to be launched, with a number of integrated innovation platforms for industry, education and research and laboratories at provincial and ministerial levels, and is one of the cities with the most intensive national large scientific facilities, "Hefei District has accelerated the transfer and transformation of scientific and technological achievements, and further removed the development system and mechanism barriers that restrict the transfer of scientific and technological achievements. It is the country's first initiative to deepen the equity investment reform of industrialization funds, and 85 science and innovation enterprises have received 65 million yuan of industrialization funds, driving social capital investment of 2 billion yuan".
In addition to Hefei, Wuhu and Bengbu have also made some achievements in scientific and technological innovation. Xu Ziyue, a second level inspector of the Department of Commerce of Anhui Province, said that Wuhu, a new research and development institution in the province, accounted for 1/4 of the total, and Wuhu, with 10000 effective invention patents, ranked first in Anhui Province for ten consecutive years. As a provincial silicon based new material industry cluster development base, Bengbu has successfully developed a batch of silicon based new materials. The silicon based new material industry has made continuous innovation achievements, leading the way on the world track.
In Jiangsu, Nanjing, Suzhou and Lianyungang, based on their respective functional positioning, continue to deepen reform and innovation, promote the industrial agglomeration of integrated circuit, biomedicine, high-end equipment manufacturing and other industries, and form a distinctive development pattern. A total of 244 institutional innovation achievements have been formed, of which 15 have been replicated and promoted nationwide, 7 have been filed with national ministries and commissions, and 108 have been replicated and promoted in the province.
"The new international economic and trade rules for elevation standards in Nanjing have accelerated the construction of an institutional system that is consistent with international prevailing rules, and more than 160 innovative institutional achievements have been formed." Lin Qikun, deputy director of Nanjing Jiangbei New Area Management Committee, said that since its inception, Nanjing has been committed to integrating with international rules. With the deepening of reform, the fields of exploration are also expanding. The innovation measures involve the transformation of government functions, investment and trade, financial innovation, business environment cultivation and other aspects.
Ding Hong, Executive Dean of Jiangbei New Area (Free Trade Zone) Development Research Institute of Nanjing University of Information Engineering and Special Researcher of the Counsellor's Office of Jiangsu Provincial Government, told the International Finance News that Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone, centering on serving the country's major strategy and positioning its own characteristics, benchmarking international high-level economic and trade rules, explored system integration and innovation, and provided solid support for further optimizing the business environment and building a world-class industrial cluster, Strengthen integration with other regions of the Yangtze River Delta to jointly build the "golden zone" of the pilot free trade zone.
Ding Hong further said that the task entrusted by the state to Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone is to focus on building an open economic development pilot zone, a demonstration zone for innovation and development of real economy and industrial transformation and upgrading. Under the new development concept, the achievements made in the differential exploration of the three major regions in Jiangsu have made new exploration for China's regional economy and industrial development and innovation path.
Focus on the integration of digital economy
How can the Yangtze River Delta Pilot Free Trade Zone promote high-quality development by opening to the outside world at a high level? The openness and innovation in the digital field is a bold stroke.
Zhejiang is the province that first proposed the concept of "digital free trade zone". According to Yang Wei, director of the Free Trade Zone Division of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce, with the integration and application of digital technology, the trade investment, financial services, government functions, governance environment, etc. of the pilot free trade zone have undergone profound changes. In this context, the "Digital Free Trade Zone" came into being. At present, how to promote the high-quality development of the digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta with more regional characteristics, more flexible practices, more diversified models and more diversified layouts, not only reflect the internal linkage of the region, but also serve the overall strategic positioning, jointly build the "Digital Yangtze River Delta" and release the digital dividend, is a problem that needs to be considered.
Under the leadership of the pilot free trade zone, from January to September this year, Hangzhou's core digital technology industry above designated size generated 1.16 trillion yuan in revenue, accounting for 49.64% of the province's total. Ge Yibo, director of the System Innovation Department of the Hangzhou Area Management Committee of Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone, said that Hangzhou has developed digital trade in the whole link, promoted the upgrading of the new business model of digital trade, gathered more than 2/3 of the national cross-border e-commerce retail import and export platforms, and the well-known cross-border e-commerce export brands accounted for 1/3 of the province. More than 30 leading enterprises in the digital trade field, such as Alibaba, Amazon, Google, Lianlian and Panjie, gathered together.
"This year's epidemic has accelerated the wave of digital transformation of traditional physical enterprises. How to build a new sustainable private domain operation mode has become the top priority for all kinds of businesses." In Pan Helin's view, the digital economy is an integrated economy. The key is to take integrated development as an opportunity to support and guide the real economy, especially the manufacturing industry.
Pan Helin believed that in the face of the real problem of peak flow in the digital economy era, the digital economy needs to call for a new business civilization concept of "cooperation and symbiosis, and development for the good", "The global business model of consumer centered, online offline integration and public private integration has become a new trend. As an important task to strengthen, optimize and expand the digital economy during the" Fourteenth Five Year Plan "period, the broad development prospect of global business will promote more new business types and new models for digital real integration".