Guangzhou strives to match business environment with international standard

As part of its persistent effort to improve its business environment, Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, has been striving to make sure that its protection of minor investors is in line with the World Bank's standard.

Specific proposals

After carefully studying all the 46 issues related to protection of minority investors, one of a set of indicators used by the World Bank to quantitatively evaluate an economy's business environment, the municipal judicial department worked out 16 specific proposals to help the government reform its handling of 10 of the issues on which it fails to meet the bank's standard.

"We have focused on related cases and our practices when developing these reform proposals," said Liao Ronghui, head of the department.

Among the proposals are those aimed at addressing issues regarding pre-trial evidence exchanges, investigations by lawyers in civil proceedings, mass securities-related disputes, disputes involving minority investors, commercial mediation, and lawsuits filed by minority shareholders.

The department also commissioned experts to conduct in-depth study of the subject, and conducted field surveys to gain first-hand information.

Legislative effort

According to Liao, great effort has been made to improve the legal system supporting the city's business environment. The department has released a series of regulations and guidelines to nurture tech talents, coordinate various legal services, and strengthen the city's social credit system.

It has also streamlined the review and approval procedure for policies on business environment. As a result, 10 such policies have been quickly released so far this year.

Meanwhile, it has repealed or revised inappropriate provisions impeding the improvement of the city's business environment.

Serving enterprises

So far this year, a team of 1,000 lawyers, organized by the department, have offered legal services to 10,000 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) in over 100 industrial parks across the city. 

Meanwhile, the department provided nearly 57,500 local MSMEs with free legal risk assessment as well as legal opinions and counseling, and helped them resolve more than 2,300 disputes over execution of contracts, leasing of shops and labor relations through mediation.

It also diversified approaches to commercial disputes, setting up a number of special mediation committees for disputes in such areas as e-commerce, intellectual property rights and international trade.

In addition, to advance the work of streamlining administration, delegating more powers to lower-level governments and society, improving regulation and optimizing services, it examined legal issues in 7,850 matters involving adjustment to administrative powers and 763 matters involving public services.