The Beijing Foreign Trade and Economic Commission recently announced that examination and approval procedures for foreign-invested companies starting business in Beijing must be completed within 15 days.
Items requiring administrative approval were slashed from 41 to 37.
These two new rules were made after city officials completed a large-scale pruning of 1,984 articles in the regional regulations related to foreign business and trade.
According to Chen Gang, a local economic official in Beijing, the above-mentioned measures aim to constitute a "green channel" which will make it easier and more convenient for foreign businessmen to get approval to start their businesses.
Statistics show that Beijing approved 1,033 foreign-invested companies during the first 11 months of 2001, bringing foreign investment of 3.54 billion U.S. dollars, up 63.2 percent over the same period last year.
(People's Daily January 8, 2002)
