China has issued a new guideline including 10 measures to improve its market access system. This is the first policy document released at the central level to refine the market access system.

A pivotal characteristic of the document is its directions for establishing a fair market access system that is more compatible with the new quality productive forces, Guo Liyan, deputy director of the Economic Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission, told Science and Technology Daily.

Optimizing the market access environment

With the new round of technological revolution and resultant industrial transformation, the traditional market access rules, systems, and regulatory approaches cannot be directly applied to the new business formats and sectors. Therefore, there is an urgent need to innovate institutional mechanisms for their faster and more robust development.

To create a better market environment for new industries, such as deep-sea exploration, aerospace, aviation, healthcare, new energy, AI, information security, and intelligent rail transportation, there will be precise implementation strategies to optimize the allocation of production factors and improve access efficiency.

Optimizing the market access environment for new business formats and sectors will help vitalize business entities and accelerate the development of new quality productive forces, Guo said.

From innovative resources to real productive forces

Transforming ultra-large-scale market resources into real productive forces has long been a pain point for technological innovation and industrial development. Guo said refining the market access system to accelerate the formation of new quality productive forces is a pragmatic measure to address this issue.

The guideline says advanced technology application promotion centers and various innovation platforms will be leveraged to commercialize research results and facilitate the flow of innovative resources and capital elements, thus accelerating the development of new quality productive forces tailored to the condition of each region.

In addition, select fields will be prioritized to promote collaboration among key enterprises, research institutions, and relevant regions in global frontier scientific research.  They include electronics and information, computational science, deep sea, aerospace, new energy, new materials, biomedicine, quantum technology, and modern seed industry.

These sectors will also be encouraged to engage in the formulation of international market access rules and standards for convenient and efficient application of innovative achievements in key areas.

The guideline will help ease restrictions on commercialization of research results, boosting the research and development of novel technologies and products, which will also help attract more capital throughout the entire process, Guo said.

Expanding market access pilots

The guideline proposes expanding market access pilots. Centering on strategic emerging industries and future industries, it emphasizes leveraging policies, technical standards, testing and certification, and data systems to better promote the application of new technologies and products.

Some regions will be selected to carry out market access pilot projects, with special measures for relaxing market access introduced in batches. In the regions where special measures to relax market access have been implemented, policy evaluations will be carried out.

"Those pilot projects deemed ready for replication should be accelerated for wider application nationwide, providing robust support for further relaxing and standardizing market access," Guo said.