Chinese Vice-Premier Li Lanqing said Thursday China will continue its efforts to rectify and regulate the market and economic order this year, targeting at fake and substandard goods and their producers, smuggling, tax evasion and other economic crimes.
Addressing a national meeting on rectifying and regulating the market and economic order, Li called on all localities to crack down hard on fake and substandard goods, particularly the production and marketing of fake and substandard food, medicines, medical equipment and farm materials.
He said China will rectify and regulate the construction sector and cultural market, strike hard on smuggling and the trading of smuggled good and pyramid selling, improve tax collection and step up efforts to regulate price and fee charges.
The vice-premier urged more efforts to rectify the financial and credit system, and remove regional protectionism and monopolies in a bid to build a unified, open, orderly and competitive market system.
He called on the country to rectify intermediary organizations, punish those who falsify accounts and offer false information, and improve the tourism market.
In the near future, priority should be given to crackdown on the production and trading of fake and substandard goods, tax evasion, irregularities in the banking, securities and insurance sectors, illegal gas station projects and trading of inferior oil.
Li stressed the need to improve laws and regulations and establish a sound law-enforcement mechanism, to ensure a sustained and fundamental improvement of the market and economic order.
It is learned that last year China shut down half a million workshops producing fake products. The law enforcement departments handled 1.2 million cases of fake products, involving two billion U.S. dollars-worth of goods. They also confiscated 158 million illegal publications and 4.2 million copies of pirated software.
(People's Daily January 25, 2002)
