Wuxi stands out for creating law-based business environment

Having the best business environment in its province and being the fourth most vital economy among Chinese cities, Wuxi in East China's Jiangsu province has orchestrated an outstanding law-based business environment.

Taking concrete measures

To help local enterprises tackle the unprecedented challenge posed by the COVID-19 epidemic, the city's administrative and judiciary bodies laid out a total of 123 concrete measures during the first half of this year to facilitate enterprises' work resumption, defuse financial risks, improve the city's law-based business environment, and boost the high-quality development of its private economy.

Among them were the 35 measures for helping small and medium businesses overcome their difficulties and the eight put forward by Wuxi's judicial department for conducting legal risk assessment for local enterprises.

Improving legal environment

In an effort to minimize the adverse impact of administrative law enforcement activities on enterprises, the municipal judicial department launched a law enforcement inspection campaign this year to regulate enterprise-related administrative law enforcement activities.

By the end of June the authority had handled 130 administrative reconsideration cases and rectified 21 percent of the administrative law enforcement activities it examined. In addition, it assisted the municipal government with reviewing nearly 200 important files, regulatory documents and contracts.

The city's other legal and judiciary authorities including courts, procuratorates, public security bureaus and the municipal commission for political and legal affairs have also actively contributed to the improvement of its business environment by cracking down on crimes against the local eco-system, prudently handling criminal cases involving private enterprises, increasing police presence and upgrading the big data-based urban governance platform.

Last year, for example, courts across Wuxi concluded 1,298 IP-related cases of various types in an effort to strengthen judicial IP protection.

Enhancing legal support for enterprises

To help enterprises navigate the crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, the city's political and legal authorities mobilized over 6,400 Party members to disseminate legal knowledge including China's first Civil Code among enterprises.

Meanwhile, its intermediate court joined hands with the local branch of the People's Bank of China, China's central bank, to set up a mediation studio aimed at settling financial disputes before they enter legal proceedings.

As more and more local enterprises participated in projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, the city also organized a legal expert team to help them handle issues concerning cross-border trade. So far, the team has provided over 13,000 enterprises with 4,657 legal proposals.