Mao Jinhuang

Xi Jinping, the Party’s General Secretary, hosted the conference with private enterprises and private companies and delivered a significant speech, which arose hot responses. All private companies and private entrepreneurs should feel totally reassured by his inspiring speech and devote themselves to seeking development. Now, I’d like to summarize six key points to illustrate what the speech really means.

I. The numbers “fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty and ninety”: confirming the status and functions of Private Enterprises.

During the conference, Xi Jingping, the Party’s General Secretary, said these numbers —“fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty and ninety” represent the features of non-public sectors. That is, this economy contributed to over 50% of tax revenue, 60% GDP growth, 70% technical innovative achievements, 80% job creation in rural and urban areas and 90% scales of enterprises. He fully pointed out what the private sector had contributed to the stable growth, innovation, employment and livelihood improvement.In this case, the non-public sector's status and functions in the county's economic and social development have not changed, and the national principle and policies to bolster the non-public sector have not changed. To be specific, the non-public sector remains the important part of the socialist market economy as its role is a crucial basis to support social-economic growth. This will never change. It will also never change the policies and principles to unswervingly encourage, support and guide the development of non-public sector and to ensure that various ownerships have equal access to production factors, open and fair market competition and the same legal protection and supervision.

II. Equality: Identifying the role of Non-Public Sector

On the one hand, he said that comparing with public sector, the private sector couldn’t keep up with the public one in terms of equal access to property protection, open and fair market competition and production factors. On the other hand, he re-stressed the policy to unswervingly encourage, support and guide the development of non-public sector and to ensure that various ownerships have equal access to production factors, open and fair market competition and the same legal protection and supervision raised by the 18th CPC National Congress. The government protects the property rights and legitimate interests of all kinds of ownership by adhering to the equality of rights, equality of opportunity and equality of rules, abolishing all forms of unreasonable regulations on the non-public economy, and eliminating hidden barriers and fix specific measures promoting non-public enterprises entering franchising fields with their economic vitality and innovation stimulated. We should not only cultivate a sound development atmosphere but also make private companies and private entrepreneurs feel totally reassured to seeking development.

III. Fairness: cultivating a sound development atmosphere for non-public sector

Xi Jinping emphasized the significance of protecting property rights based on the core principle of fairness put up with on the 4th Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, and iterated the principle of equal access to open and fair market competition for both public and non-public sector, and the long-term goal to unswervingly consolidate the public sector’s development and to unswervingly encourage, support and guide the development of non-public sector. He advocated protecting the legitimate rights and interests such as legal property rights and intellectual property rights of private enterprises and private companies through laws and regulations. He advocated fair competition based on the modern property rights system as policies and documents violating the principle of fair, open and transparent market rules abolished, striving to enforce the anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition laws. In so doing, we can further boost the targeted inspection on fair market competition to better serve the private sectors with the institutional guarantees provided to develop private sectors, to practice modern enterprise system smoothly.

IV. Objective: pinpointing the difficulties and problems of development of private enterprises.

Xi Jinping analyzed the difficulties and problems encountered by private companiesin their development from external and internal as well as objective and subjective factors. As for external factors, the private enterprise are still adapting to volatile global economy, transformation of domestic economy and weak effect of carry-out policy. Considering the internal reasons, in the boom years as some private enterprises prefer extensive operation by expanding and scaling with debt rising, they are likely to ignore environmental protection, social security, products quality, safety, credit, etc. with potential anti-regulation deeds and even illegal activities coming out. Therefore, these companies may encounter an awful lot of pressure as the law enforcement is badly required. On this note, great importance should be attached to solve the difficulties and issues faced by these private enterprises. As these obstacles stem from developing course, they can be worked out still during the development.

V. Confidence: viable measure, fixed heading with a bright future

He also stressed that the burden of taxes and fees on the companies should be eased; measures should be taken to address the difficulty and high cost of financing for private firms; policy implementation should be improved; a new type of cordial and clean relationship between government and business should be established and entrepreneurs' personal and property safety should be ensured. This will keep the private enterprises to a fixed heading with strong confidence in prosperous development and seize the opportunity to be the world-leading companies with cutting-edged competitiveness as entering the new era.

VI. Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship:private enterprises and private entrepreneurs belong to our own family.

He advocated carrying forward the entrepreneurship, care for the development of enterprises and entrepreneurs by actively providing necessary services to them including identifying and redressing a batch of wrongful convictions , ensuring entrepreneurs' per-sonal and property safety and so on. He truly confirmed the crucial role played by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in our national economy. As the concept of entrepreneurship was written in the work report of 2017, it just represents the indispensable function of entrepreneurship to boost the economy. And at this conference, it is how to play a full role of entrepreneurship that Xi Jinping stressed. As we all know, economic growth is actually the result of innovation. That is, as the raw production factors are re-arranged to cultivate a new practice with efficiency enhanced and costs reduced. In this case, innovation is not about technology but relates to economic terms. That is, different from technical invention, the innovation here means exerting the existing technologies into economic development, producing an original economic growth. Entrepreneurs are just qualifies with the innovative thinking, so innovation boasts the spirit of entrepreneurship.

What have been expected and suggested might be really practical to help the entrepreneurs to cross over the“thee mountains”(referring to the obstacles in terms of marketing, financing and restructuring).

(Written by Mao Jinhuang, the Executive Dean of theInstitute for Studies in County Economy Development (Institute for Stu- dies in Rural Revitalization Strategy))

Edited by Qu Fangye