Qingdao recently released a document entitled Opinions on Incubating Market Entities to Develop the Private Sector, which underlined three kinds of market entities as the focus of future incubation.

In 2017, the city saw the number of its industrial enterprises above the designated size increase by 300. The collective increase for service enterprises above the designated size, above-norm wholesale, retail, and hotelling and catering businesses, and qualified construction companies above the designated size is 500.

The city aims to increase the total number of these four kinds of enterprises to 12,000 by the end of 2020, which will be a 37 percent increase from the end of 2016.

Qingdao’s high-tech enterprises have also seen rapid increase. Its number reached 1,600 in 2017. The goal is over 2,000 by the end of 2020.

Breakthroughs were also seen in public listing of Qingdao’s companies.

In 2017, five companies went public; 25 companies debuted on China’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations (NEEQ), also known as the "new third board;” 10 companies which have applied for listing are waiting for a reply from the China Securities Regulatory Commission. The city aims to increase the number of its listed companies to 60, the number of companies trading on the new third board to over 300 and the number of companies awaiting a reply from CSRC for their listing applications to 15 annually.