On October 23, during a press conference in Harbin themed on “Promoting High-Quality Development,” local officials highlighted several initiatives aimed at easing market entry for new businesses. Among these initiatives, the government will provide new enterprises with complimentary official seals, including name seals, financial seals, legal representative seals, and contract seals.
Son Gang, a senior official from the Harbin Municipal Market Supervision Administration, shared insights into the city’s recent reforms designed to streamline business registration processes. Since launching its business facilitation reforms in 2018, Harbin has effectively reduced the average time required to set up a business from 11.5 days to just 4 hours. The costs associated with starting a business have been cut from several hundred to a couple of thousand yuan down to zero. Additionally, the bureaucratic process has been simplified from over seven separate steps to a single “one-stop-shop” approach for eight essential tasks, consolidating the processes for obtaining business licenses, tax invoices, seal engraving, social security registration, employment registration, medical insurance registration, housing fund account opening, and bank appointments. This significant improvement has positioned Harbin among the top cities in the country for business convenience. The city consistently ranks highly in third-party evaluations for optimizing the business environment in Heilongjiang province and has been recognized by the National Development and Reform Commission for achieving one of the fastest increases in satisfaction among market entities.
Harbin has also introduced an innovative measure allowing individual businesses to transition to corporate status by synchronously handling eight different tasks as part of a single change registration process. This reform retains the former goodwill and operational continuity of the business, allowing for automatic tax payment verification, smart pre-filling of registration forms, and combined processing of essential changes like tax, seals, social security, medical insurance, housing fund registration, and bank appointments. Individual clinics transitioning to businesses can also simultaneously apply for changes to their medical institution licenses.
Additional efforts have included the launch of standardized services for businesses at banks. Beyond the 20 administrative service halls, Harbin has partnered with 114 bank branches to create designated assistance zones for new business registrations, allowing applicants to conveniently initiate their businesses and bank accounts at no additional cost.
Harbin’s new measures for enterprise migration registration are designed to minimize the hassle associated with relocating businesses. The reforms enable applicants to complete the migration process with just one visit, eliminating the need to submit paperwork to their previous location if they are moving within the city. Applicants can expect a commitment to complete their registration within one working day if all documents are in order.
To further support new businesses, Harbin is using government funds to provide free official seals and has created an accessible policy list with QR codes for residents to read comprehensive policies. Additionally, an electronic seal system has been launched, allowing businesses to apply for both physical and electronic seals without charge. Since the beginning of the year, the city has issued 38,700 sets of seals, saving applicants approximately 9.6 million yuan.
As a result of these comprehensive policies, from January to September this year, Harbin recorded 140,300 new registered business entities, marking an 11.95% increase year-over-year, with an average of 742 new registrations daily. Among these, 42,900 were new enterprises, representing a remarkable 15.96% increase, the highest rate among the four sub-provincial cities in Northeast China.
