(Yicai) Feb. 5 -- Shanghai has released an updated action plan to further enhance the Chinese city’s world-class business environment, including tougher measures to protect the legitimate rights and interests of companies.

Under the new plan, efforts to combat corporate-related crimes will center on two main areas this year: punishing those who spread false rumors about businesses and cracking down on intellectual property infringement, Li Rui, deputy director of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau’s legal affairs department, said at today’s citywide business environment conference.

Shanghai has issued eight such annual action plans since 2018. The latest has 58 new initiatives, building on more than 1,100 previous measures. This is also the first of the plans to be benchmarked against the World Bank's Business Ready assessment system to guide reforms.

In response to concerns about illegal inter-provincial law enforcement, Shanghai will strictly regulate cross-regional police collaboration and set up a system to review interregional enforcement requests to prevent the improper sealing, seizing, and freezing of corporate assets, Li added.

Last November, the public prosecutor in Zhejiang province disclosed a case of two police officers from another province making an unauthorized arrest of a local entrepreneur.

Beyond tackling corporate-related crimes, the action plan also seeks to reduce unnecessary administrative inspections on businesses, preventing illegal or repetitive checks. For example, inspectors will be required to show inspection QR codes when entering corporate buildings to verify their credentials.

The local market regulator aims to slash the number of on-site inspections within two to three years compared with last year, while greatly improving inspection capabilities, said Wu Beibei, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation’s regulations department.

For policy services, the latest action plan proposes concrete measures, including stepped-up efforts to interpret and guide corporate preferential policies, as well as more convenient channels for companies to apply for these benefits.

Additionally, Shanghai will leverage digital tools such as Big Data and artificial intelligence to refine corporate profiling, enabling policy-making departments to set more precise eligibility criteria and coverage for business incentives.

Editor: Emmi Laine