At the China Investment Climate Forum that ran from November 11
to 12, the World Bank (WB) issued a 120 Chinese cities rank report
on their competence.
The report says that considering indexes of the comprehensive
investment climate, the government efficiency and the harmonious
society, cities ranked at the top are Hangzhou (in Zhejiang Province), Qingdao (Shandong Province), Shaoxing (Zhejiang),
Suzhou (Jiangsu Province), Xiamen (Fujian Province) and Yantai (Shandong) winning
the "Golden Medal City" honor and the following 13 cities, namely
Beijing, Dalian (Liaoning Province), Dongguan (Guangdong Province), Foshan (Guangdong),
Fuzhou (Fujian), Guangzhou (Guangdong), Jiangmen (Guangdong),
Ningbo (Zhejiang), Shanghai, Shenzhen (Guangdong), Tianjin, Weihai
(Shandong) and Zhuhai (Guangdong) winning the "Silver Medal City"
honor.
The report is based on an investigation covering all provinces
except for Tibet Autonomous Region. As many as 1,200
working staff held face-to-face investigations with 124,00
enterprises, which is the largest for the WB on investigating the
Chinese cities' status quo.
About 8 percent of the investigated enterprises are state-owned,
28 percent are with foreign capital involved and 64 percent are
non-public ownership economy.
Government efficiency
The WB's Director for China and Mongolia David Dollar explained
that although Shanghai is a well-known metropolis around the world,
it doesn't rank at the top. After investigating 200 enterprises in
Shanghai, the WB found that on average they spent 60 days each year
communicating with the government and the average import and export
clearance time is 8.7 days.
In Chinese coastal cities, like Dongguan, Jiangmen, Shenzhen,
Qingdao and Zhuhai, the clearance time falls to three to four days;
however, in cities ranking at the bottom of the list, including
many northeastern and northwestern cities, enterprises have to
spend about 20 days on the same clearance.
In Hangzhou, enterprises need eight days each year on average to
communicate with the government. While in cities ranking at the
bottom, three months are needed.
David Dollar said that government efficiency ranks according to
the enterprises' tax and fee burden, government communication time,
the proportion of small and medium-sized companies getting loans,
customs clearance time, the loss of production value caused from
electric power supply and transportation, the supernumerary rate,
the staff's educational level, and proportion of the private owned
enterprises.
Environmental quality
A city's clean air can reflect local people's living standards
and governmental efforts on environmental management. Furthermore,
a foreign businessman seldom invests somewhere with bad air quality
and living environment, said David Dollar.
The report said the lowest standards for environmental
protection in these cities are: at least 95 percent of all
industrial waste have been disposed of according to relevant
criteria; average green area per person should exceed 10 square
meters; and the number of days with good and excellent air quality
should be over 300 a year.
According to the investigation, among 120 cities, 100 percent of
the industrial wastes in Qingdao Weihai and Yantai are disposed of;
Mianyang (Sichuan Province) and Jinan provide the
largest green area for each person, at 30 and 28 square meters
respectively; Huizhou (Guangdong), Yantai, Weihai and Zhuhai have
all year round good air quality. Comparatively, cities at the
bottom of the list, especially in the central, west and northeast
China, hold at 80 percent, 4.4 square meters and 218 days
respectively.
Citing Guangdong as an example, David Dollar said that China has
made great achievements in the recent 10 years in managing
environmental pollution. Most cities in Guangdong already have
similar strong basic installations, for instance in terms of
government efficiency, environmental protection, medical and
sanitation service and education, collectively known as soft
environment. This time the WB ranked the cities by judging them on
their soft environments accounting for 75 percent of the mark, and
25 percent for the hard environment.
Cities in northeast, central China and west
The report says the northeast industrial base and the central
and western parts show their advantages on high-level educated
staff, cheap labor force and steady-going electric power supply.
The local governments can improve their efficiency in one or two
years by concentrated reform. Three to five years' continuing
investment will change the educational, medical and environmental
standards.
According to the newly appointed Vice President of the World
Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region James W. Adams, these cities
can learn from some advanced provinces such as Zhejiang, Jiangsu,
Guangdong and Shandong. By improving government efficiency,
increasing investor transparency and convenience, in a short
period, the local governments can improve enterprises' efficiency
by 25 to 35 percent, and gain a 15 to 25 percent increase from
foreign investment.
WB experts suggested these cities make efforts on reducing the
tax burden of domestic-funded enterprises and the total tax should
account for 2 to 4 percent of the sales income; shortening
government communication time to under 60 days; reducing customs
clearance to three days; educating 15 to 20 percent of employees to
technical education level or above; and ensuring that more than
half of the small sized domestic-funded enterprises can get loans
from banks.
(Xinhua News Agency, translated by Zhou Jing for China.org.cn,
November 15, 2006)