City streamlines atmosphere for businesses adopting new technologies.
 
From streamlining administrative tasks and delegating power, improving regulations and upgrading services to putting a lot of government services online, Harbin of Northeast China's Heilongjiang province has seen tremendous improvements in its business environment.
 
In the first half of this year, the government of Harbin integrated 111 administrative services into a single website.
 
As a result, the average time using the services fell by 38 percent. Materials required fell by 43 percent and the steps required per service decreased by 69 percent, according to the business environment bureau of Harbin.
 
A total of 96 percent of the administrative matters can be handled online, marking an achievement in the city's efforts to improve the business environment, local officials said.
 
The Harbin government is tackling the difficulties of businesses, approving credit, handling administrative tasks online and organizing departments to optimize the online administrative services, said Mei Jianwei, deputy head of the business environment bureau of Harbin.
 
The efforts have helped solve 97 difficulties lodged by 60 companies, approved credit for 13,000 businesses and optimized 96 administrative services, according to Mei.
 
"The business environment bureau will strengthen the administrative services with high standards.
 
"The bureau will strive to make more than 95 percent of its administrative service platforms standardized and extend services to the city's counties and communities," Mei said.
 
The bureau will continue to focus on reforming administrative tasks, regulations and services, and the construction of an intelligent platform for promoting Harbin's business environment in an effort to build the city's commercial brand, Mei noted.
 
The current platform is not only built to serve businesses but also aims at supporting government policy decision-making by analyzing market performance. The online platform is part of the first phase in Harbin's process of becoming a smart city, and is helping connect businesses and governments to solve enterprise difficulties such as financing and operation. This promotes the high-quality development of Harbin businesses, said Fu Li, director of the department charged with improving the city's business environment.
 
Utilizing internet technology, the city government has also launched an app that combines the resources for administrative and public services.
 
The app offers more than 10,000 service items from information checking to online payment.
 
Businesses have downloaded the app so that they can handle matters more efficiently, Fu said.
 
Zhang Xiaoduo, director of administrative services management, said the app is like a mobile government department for the public that allows them to deal with administrative services in hand.
 
Apart from online services, Zhang said continuous improvements will be made to the social credit system and the business environment to make Harbin even more digital.
 
Next on the agenda are the city's legal business environment and the use of information technology to promote the business environment to achieve great progress, Mei said.