Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on Optimizing Business Environment

(Adopted at the 20th Session of the Standing Committee of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress on April 10, 2020; amended for the first time according to the Decision on Amending the Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on Optimizing Business Environment adopted at the 36th Session of the Standing Committee of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress on October 28, 2021; amended for the second time according to the Decision on Amending the Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on Optimizing Business Environment adopted at the 8th Session of the Standing Committee of the 16th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress on November 22, 2023)

Chapter I General Provisions

Article 1

With a view to continuing to optimize business environment, stimulating the vitality and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of market entities, advancing high-quality economic development, promoting the modernization of governance system and capacity, improving Shanghai's soft power in full scale and building Shanghai into a modern socialist metropolis with global excellence and worldwide influence, these Regulations are formulated according to the Regulations on Optimizing Business Environment and other relevant laws and administrative rules, and in the light of the actual circumstances of this Municipality.

Article 2

These Regulations shall apply to the work carried out for optimizing business environment within the administrative area of this Municipality.

For the purpose of these Regulations, the "business environment" means the institutional mechanism factors and conditions relevant to market economic activities of enterprises and other market entities.

Article 3

Optimizing business environment shall adhere to the principle of being market-oriented, law-based and internationalized, take the sense of gain among enterprises and other business entities as the evaluation criteria, center on the transformation of government functions, leverage the Integrated Online Platform, observe the service notion of "being responsive but not intervening", benchmark against the highest standards and levels of international rules, and create a top-notch international business environment underpinned by convenient trade investment, high administrative efficiency, standardized government services, and comprehensive legal system in order to build a consistent, fair, transparent and predictable development environment for investment and trade for enterprises and other business entities.

Article 4

The municipal and district people's governments shall strengthen the organization and leadership in optimizing business environment, establish and improve the coordinating mechanism for optimizing business environment, elevate the joint meeting mechanism on enterprise service, and strengthen the coordination work for enterprise service within their respective administrative areas according to the principles and requirements for optimizing business environment. The main responsible person of the government is the first responsible person for optimizing business environment.

The municipal and district reform and development departments shall be the competent departments responsible for guiding, organizing and coordinating the daily work on optimizing business environment within their respective administrative areas.

The municipal departments of economy and informatization, commerce, government service, market regulation, housing and urban-rural development, planning and natural resources, judicial administration, financial regulation, intellectual property and others shall fulfill their duties related to business environment optimization based on their respective responsibilities.

Article 5

The municipal and district people's governments and their relevant departments shall, in light of the actual situation, take full advantage of current legal institutions and national policy resources to explore new practical experience and methods of optimizing business environment, and replicate and promote the effective reform measures.

Pudong New Area shall take the construction of the leading area for socialist modernization as the goal, strengthen the system integration of reform measures, and make bold pilot programs and breakthroughs in optimizing business environment.

China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, Lin-gang Special Area, Zhangjiang National Innovation Demonstration Zone, Hongqiao International Central Business District and the like shall play a leading role in optimizing business environment, and carry out pilot programs on various reform measures conducive to optimizing business environment.

Article 6

This Municipality shall strengthen the exchange and cooperation with the relevant provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, focus on the construction of business environment of the Yangtze River Delta Ecofriendly and Green Integrated Demonstration Zone, promote the establishment of unified market entry and regulating rules, and strive to build an integrated and open market based on the free flow of production factors; promote the cross-provincial handling of government services, optimize the service rules and process, strengthen data resources sharing and mutual recognition of electronic certificates, and promote the All-in-One-Go integrated services, so as to improve the overall business environment of the Yangtze River Delta region.

Article 7

The municipal and district people's governments shall establish incentive mechanisms for optimizing business environment in which the entities and individuals who make outstanding achievements for optimizing business environment are to be commended and rewarded based on relevant provisions.

All districts and departments may, based on the actual circumstances, proactively explore the measures to optimize business environment within the framework of rule of law. The entities and individuals that make mistakes or deviate in the explorations but make and implement the decisions according to the provisions of the State and this Municipality in a diligent and responsible manner without making any personal gains, shall not be assessed negatively, and shall be exempted from or relieved of their liabilities according to law.

Article 8

This Municipality shall promote the business environment optimization reform by taking the satisfaction of market entities and social public as the goal as required by the criteria of business environment evaluation, and give play to the leading and supervisory role of business environment evaluation in optimizing business environment.

All districts and all departments shall make adjustments and improvements to the policy measures for optimizing business environment based on the business environment evaluation results.

Chapter II Market Environment

Article 9

This Municipality shall give full play to the decisive role of the market in allocating resources, build a service system covering the entire lifecycle of enterprises, and continue to optimize business environment in enterprise start-up, financing and credit, dispute resolution and enterprise exit.

Article 10

All market entities may enter the fields outside the national negative list of market access in an equal footing according to law. The fields outside the national negative list of foreign investment access shall be administered by the equal treating principle for both domestic and foreign investments.

This Municipality shall formulate guiding policies for industry development based on the applicable provisions on urban function positioning, development and planning, environmental protection and safety and established procedures, and announce such policies to the public.

Article 11

This Municipality shall benchmark against high-standard international investment and trade rules to promote trade facilitation, and encourage and advance foreign investment. The China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone and Lin-gang Special Area shall, based on the national arrangements, carry out pilot programs of foreign investment policies and measures to expand opening-up.

All kinds of enterprises are encouraged to set up headquarters and research and development centers in this Municipality. The international organizations closely related to the construction of Shanghai international economic, financial, trade, shipping and science and technology innovation centers are encouraged to register in this Municipality, and the international organizations related to this Municipality's key strategic emerging industries are supported to be created in this Municipality.

Article 12

This Municipality shall, according to law, protect the decision-making power in operation, property rights and other legitimate rights and interests of various market entities, and protect the personal safety and property security of enterprise operators.

No entity or individual may intervene in the pricing, internal governance, business model or other issues that should be independently decided by market entities, impose any kind of apportionment on market entities, or illegally implement any administrative coercion or engage in any other acts that infringe on the legitimate rights and interests of market entities and their business operators.

The handling of enterprise-related cases shall be regulated to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the enterprise and its managers and shareholders that assist the investigations of such cases, and to safeguard its lawful business operations. Any sealing, seizing, freezing or other measures shall be strictly differentiated between corporate legal person's property and shareholder's personal property, and between the illegal gains of the crime-related persons and their family’s lawful property. Any sealing, seizing, or freezing shall not exceed the authority, scope, amount or time limit, and shall be promptly adjusted or removed if necessary according to law after verification.

Except as otherwise provided by laws, rules or regulations, market entities shall, without any intervention of any entity or individual, have the right to independently decide to join or withdraw from any industry association, chamber of commerce or other social organizations.

Article 13

All enterprises and other business entities shall be equally treated in terms of the development support policies of the State and this Municipality, and shall be entitled to the fair use of funds, technology, human resources, land use rights, other natural resources and other production factors and public service resources.

The municipal and district people's governments and their departments shall equally treat all enterprises and other business entities, and shall not formulate or implement any discriminatory policies.

This Municipality shall support enterprises and other business entities to carry out environment, society, governance and other sustainable development practices, and encourage the financial institutions to give, under applicable provisions, differentiated treatments to the enterprises and other business entities that meet the environment, society and governance requirements.

Tendering, bidding and government procurement shall be open, transparent, fair and impartial. No unreasonable conditions shall be imposed, no establishment of branches shall be required of the potential venders or bidders, no specific performance or awards obtained in a specific administrative area or business sector shall be set as bonus or any other means shall be employed to exclude or restrict the potential bidders or tenders in order to safeguard the equal participation of various entities. Relevant competent departments shall, according to law, investigate and handle the violation of laws, rules or regulations that excludes or restricts such equal participation in tendering, bidding and government procurement.

This Municipality shall improve the management system of public resource trading, establish and improve the public resource trading platform, optimize the trading service process, and disclose public resource trading rules, process, results, supervision, credit and other information according to law. The use of electronic letters of guarantee for bidding and electronic performance bonds shall be promoted to reduce transaction costs and improve transaction efficiency.

Article 14

This Municipality shall establish and improve the fair competition coordination mechanism, strengthen law enforcement, and prevent and prohibit the acts of market monopoly, and abuse of administrative power to exclude or restrict competition, and the acts of unfair competition, so as to create a market environment advocating fair competition.

Article 15

This Municipality shall create a healthy development environment for small and medium-sized enterprises, safeguard their equal participation in market competition, and support their entrepreneurship and innovation .

The municipal and district people's governments shall formulate separate policies in fiscal support, fee reduction and exemption, financial support, public services and others, and arrange separate funds in the financial budget at the same level of government to support the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Article 16

This Municipality shall strengthen the protection of the minority investors' legitimate rights and interests, improve the mechanism for such protection, safeguard the minority investors’ rights to information, voting, dividends and supervision, give play to the function of minority investor service agencies in equity holding, exercise of right, dispute mediation, litigation support and others, and improve the convenience for minority investors to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests.

Directors of a company shall have the duty of loyalty and diligence to the company, and safeguard the company’s interests and the legitimate rights and interests of minority investors when deliberating on matters including the related-party transaction of shareholders.

Article 17

This Municipality shall incorporate all enterprise-related business licensing matters into the reform of "separation of permits from business licensing", and promote classification-based reform by directly canceling examination and approval, changing examination and approval into record-filing, practicing notification and commitment and optimizing approval services. Except for designated areas as prescribed in laws and administrative rules, such matters shall not be used as enterprise registration prerequisites. The relevant competent departments shall not prevent enterprises from applying for certain enterprise-related business licensing matters or other government services on the grounds of their registered scope of business. Enterprises undertaking any business operations not subject to administrative permit but outside the scope of registered scope of business shall not be punished by the market regulation departments.

This Municipality shall support the reform of "One Permit for One Industry", in which multiple permits required for entry into an industry are consolidated into one comprehensive industry permit subject to application through the Integrated Online Platform. The information contained in the comprehensive industry permit shall have the same probative force with the information in a single permit, and shall be valid throughout this Municipality.

The market regulation departments shall explicitly notify the enterprises of the matters subject to licensing based on their voluntary declaration of business scope, and inform the relevant competent departments of the information about the enterprises applying for license. The relevant competent departments shall timely handle the licensing matters upon the enterprise application, and promptly report the results to the market regulation departments.

Article 18

The legally established government funds, enterprise-related margin, enterprise-related administrative and institutional fees, and the business service charges priced by the government shall be administered under a catalog. Any such funds, margin or charges outside the catalog list shall be prohibited. The catalog shall be prepared by the municipal departments of finance, reform and development and others and be announced to the public.

This Municipality shall promote the use of financial institutions' letters of guarantee, guarantee insurances and others to replace the cash payment of enterprise-related margin, and the relevant competent departments of reform and development, housing and urban-rural development and others shall specify the rules and guidelines for such replacement.

Article 19

This Municipality shall nurture and develop various kinds of industry associations and chambers of commerce, and regulate and supervise the acts of collecting charges, comparison-based evaluation, certification and others by such industry associations and chambers of commerce.

The industry associations and chambers of commerce shall be liable for strengthening internal management and capacity building, reflecting industry demands in a timely manner, organizing the formulation and implementation of group standards, improving industry self-discipline, and providing market entities with the services of information inquiry, publicity, training, market expansion, protection of rights and interests, dispute resolution and others.

Article 20

The people's governments at all levels and their relevant departments in this Municipality shall fulfill the policy commitments legally made to market entities and the contracts legally entered into. No violation or breach of such contracts shall be allowed on the grounds of change of the administrative zoning or terms of government offices, institutional or functional adjustments, and replacement of relevant responsible persons. If the policy commitments or provisions of contracts are to be changed due to national interests or social public interests, such change shall be made under statutory authority and procedures, and losses incurred to related entities shall be compensated according to law.

Where the government changes or withdraws the effective administrative permits based on the conditions and procedures prescribed by law, or implements requisition and other measures, it shall make compensations according to law.

Article 21

The people's governments at all levels and their departments and public institutions in this Municipality shall not violate the contracts and delay the payment for market entities' goods, projects, services and others, and shall not in any way extend the period of any such payment beyond the agreed payment method.

Where enterprises and other business entities apply for guaranteed financing with accounts receivables and confirmation of creditor’s rights to the State authorities, public institutions and other payees, such payees shall confirm the creditor-debt relationship in a timely manner.

This Municipality shall establish and improve the constraint and discipline mechanism for delayed payments, and adopt budget management, performance evaluation, audit supervision and others to prevent and correct such delay.

Article 22

This Municipality shall strengthen the efforts on intellectual property rights protection, rationalize the comprehensive administration and law enforcement mechanism for intellectual property rights, and improve the collaboration mechanism of cross-region and cross-department law enforcement of intellectual property rights.

This Municipality shall implement the punitive compensation system against the intellectual property rights infringements, promote the establishment of a mechanism of rapid and collaborative protection on intellectual property rights, improve the cohesive mechanism between administrative and judicial protection, explore the public interest litigation in intellectual property rights, and improve the aid mechanism in safeguarding intellectual property rights. When establishing an overseas emergency assistance mechanism for enterprise intellectual property rights, the municipal departments of intellectual property and others shall guide the industries and enterprises to strengthen the capacity in responding to overseas intellectual property rights cases, and provide services in release of intellectual property rights information and legal counsel.

This Municipality shall establish and improve the business secret protection system, carry out exemplary initiatives in business secrets protection, guide and encourage enterprises to enhance self-protection of business secrets, and increase the efforts on administrative and judicial protection of business secrets.

This Municipality shall improve the diversified dispute resolution mechanism for intellectual property disputes, give full pay to the active role of industry associations, and institutions of mediation, arbitration, intellectual property services and others in resolving intellectual property disputes.

Chapter 23

In the case of emergencies, the municipal and district people's governments shall formulate working plans on assistance, compensation, subsidy, reduction, exemption or relocation based on the losses incurred to the enterprises and other business entities, and organize the implementation of such working plans.

Chapter III Government Services

Article 24

This Municipality shall establish a whole-process integrated online government service platform (hereinafter referred to as the "Integrated Online Platform"), expand the scope of service, consolidate public data resources, enhance data sharing and application, strengthen the interoperability of services handling, optimize government service procedures, promote the offline and online service integration, and build a full-scale standardized, regulated, convenient and inclusive service system to provide enterprises and other business entities with more efficient, more convenient and more fine-tuned services.

The government service items in this Municipality shall all be processed in the Integrated Online Platform, except where otherwise provided by laws, rules or regulations or involving state secrets, public security or other circumstances. Enterprises and other business entities may handle the government services through the Integrated Online Platform and obtain even precise services through the exclusive enterprise webpage in the Integrated Online Platform.

The municipal department of government services shall be responsible for overall planning, coordinating, promoting, guiding and supervising the work on the Integrated Online Platform. All districts and all departments shall promote the standardization and regulation of government services, refine and quantify the government service standards, prepare the government service guidelines, specify the conditions, materials and procedures of handling government services and the tolerance acceptance, and ensure the consistency between offline and online service standards. No catch-all clauses shall be included in the government service conditions, and neither the relevant departments may require enterprises or other business entities to provide application materials other than those specified in the government service guidelines.

Enterprises and other business entities may choose the government service channels on their own, without any designation by the relevant departments. If the standardized electronic materials are collected online, the applicants shall not be required to provide hard copies.

This Municipality shall promote the establishment of a special window for foreign-related services in the Integrated Online Platform to provide convenient services for foreign-invested enterprises and foreigners.

Article 25

The government service halls in this Municipality shall promote the integrated service window for integrated acceptance, classification-based handling and simultaneous delivery.

The service windows shall strengthen administration of standardization, promote standardization construction such as unified standards and unified identification signs, improve the service systems of one-time notification, first-response person in charge, receipts of material acceptance, completion in a specified period, and improve the working mechanisms for service appointment, full-time assistance, joint handling, staggered and extended services and others.

All districts and all departments shall allocate more staff for window service and strengthen their professional training. The service window staff shall be, according to the government's efficiency improvement provisions, comprehensively apply efficiency assessment, supervision and inspection, efficiency accountability and other means to improve service quality and efficiency.

Except in the cases explicitly prescribed in laws, rules and regulations, the service window staff shall not reject the application submitted by the applicant. If the staff rejects the application, the relevant departments shall strengthen verification and supervision.

Article 26

This Municipality shall implement a list-based administration of administrative permits. The municipal department of approval reform shall, in collaboration with relevant administrative departments, announce the list to the public in a timely manner and make dynamic adjustments.

Except as specified in the list of administrative permits, no other administrative permit shall be established against the law or established or implemented by means of record-filing, registration, sign-in, catalog, planning, annual inspection, annual report, production supervision, recognition, certification, review and others. The administrative permits that have been canceled by the State and this Municipality shall not be continued, resumed or transferred to industry associations, chambers of commerce or any other organizations for implementation.

All the relevant departments shall report the handling, charges collection, supervision and inspection of administrative permits in the current year to the approval reform department at the same level, and announce such report to the public according to law.

Article 27

This Municipality shall implement a full-fledged mechanism of notification and commitment for administrative approval. Any administrative approval items whose conditions are difficult to verify in advance but can be corrected through in-process and ex-post supervision with risks under control, the administrative approval department may make the approval through the notification and commitment, except for the administrative approval matters that are directly concerned with public security, ecological and environmental protection, personal health, life and property safety, and others subject to on-the-spot administrative decision according to law. The specific matters subject to notification and commitment shall be determined by the approval reform department and other relevant departments in collaboration and announced to the public.

Where the notification and commitment are practiced in administrative examination and approval, the relevant departments shall inform the applicant of the conditions for approval and the materials to be submitted at one time. If the applicant makes a commitment to the approval conditions in writing, the administrative approval decision shall be made directly on the spot, and the applicant's fulfillment of such commitment shall be under supervision and inspection according to law. If the applicant fails to fulfill the commitment, the approval department shall order him/her to make correction in a designated period; if the correction still fails to meet the conditions, the administrative approval decision shall be revoked, and such revocation shall be listed into the credit information platform according to applicable provisions.

Article 28

This Municipality shall follow the principles of being lawful, necessary and streamlined to regulate the intermediary service matters for administrative approval. The list of such intermediary service matters shall be prepared by the municipal approval reform department in collaboration with relevant administrative departments and announced to the public.

Unless otherwise provided by laws, rules or regulations, the market entities shall have the right to choose the intermediary service agency independently. No administrative department may designate directly or in disguise the intermediary service agency for market entities, or force directly or in disguise market entities to accept intermediary services.

Any district or department in need of appointing an intermediary service agency for technical services during administrative approval shall select such intermediary service agency through competitive means and bear the service fees.

The intermediary service agency shall specify the conditions, process, time limits and charging standards of intermediary service for statutory administrative approval and announce such information to the public.

Article 29

The relevant department of the Municipal People's Government shall publish the list of certification matters, listing the basis for certification, requesting entity, issuing entity and others in an item-by-item manner. The relevant department shall update the list on the day when a new certification matter is included in the list or a certification matter is removed from the list.

The relevant department of the Municipal People's Government shall implement on a risk-controllable basis the notification and commitment system to the certification matters that are closely related to the enterprises, unless otherwise provided by laws, rules, regulations, or other provisions of the State. The administrative department shall inform the applicant in writing the responsibility and contents of the certification and the legal liability of false commitment at one time. In the event that the administrative department finds the commitment to be false, it shall terminate the process, order correction within a prescribed period, revoke the administrative decision or impose administrative penalty according to law, and such false commitment shall be listed into the credit records. Such catalog of certification matters shall be announced to the public.

All districts and all departments shall strengthen the mutual recognition and sharing of certification, and not repeatedly request certifications.

Article 30

This Municipality shall implement a government service evaluation system of "good or bad reviews" to improve government service level. Such evaluation system shall cover all the government services, entities subject to evaluation and service channels of this Municipality. The evaluations and responses shall be made public.

The people's governments at all levels and their relevant departments in this Municipality shall establish a mechanism for verifying the bad reviews and complaints, urging corrections and giving feedback. Any matters of real-name bad reviews shall be verified by the corresponding handling entity within one working day. Matters that are simple and have reasonable grounds in the reviews shall be corrected immediately; matters that are complicated and cannot be resolved at once shall be corrected within a prescribed period. Such corrections shall be informed to the enterprises or the public in a timely manner. The competent departments of government services shall follow up on the corrections of the matters of real-name bad reviews.

Article 31

This Municipality shall promote "One Form Application and One Window Processing" in the whole process of starting up an enterprise. The applicant may complete the application for a business license, seal, invoice, basic social insurance and others through the online business registration service platform. If the application materials are complete and in conformity with statutory forms, such application shall be handled on the spot by the relevant department; if the application can not be handled on the spot, such application shall be handled within one working day.

Where the applicant makes the commitment that the articles of association, agreements, resolutions, certificates of appointment qualification and other materials submitted for applying for creation and change of registration of enterprises and other business entities are true, lawful and effective, the market regulation department may carry out formal review of such materials, unless otherwise provided by laws, rules or regulations. Any applicant who provides false materials for registration application shall be held legally accountable.

The enterprise may obtain the business license, seal and invoices required for general business activities at the Starting a Business Comprehensive Service Window in the government service hall at one time.

The establishment of business entities may practice the declaration and commitment system for application for entity name and the voluntary declaration system for enterprise domicile as pilot programs. The creation, change and deregistration of business entities through electronic means throughout the process are promoted. Multiple business entities may use one same address for registration domicile based on relevant provisions of this Municipality.

The business entities registered in this Municipality may operate outside the scope of registered domicile without the need to apply to the market regulation departments for registration and record-filing.

The district people's government or its department may provide registration addresses for the individual industrial and commercial households engaged in resident services within the community based on the development of the urban-rural community service system.

Article 32

This Municipality shall establish and improve the mechanism for collecting and applying the electronic licenses according to relevant provisions on electronic licenses. Unless otherwise provided by laws, rules or regulations, the electronic licenses issued by the municipal and district people's governments and their departments shall be incorporated into the municipal electronic license database in real time to ensure the data integrity and accuracy.

The applicant may present the electronic licenses required for business processing through the municipal electronic license database when applying for relevant matters. The accepting department shall not refuse or require the applicant to provide physical licenses, except for retrieving original licenses according to law.

Article 33

This Municipality shall establish a unified electronic seal system to promote the application of electronic seals in government services and community services, and encourage the application of electronic seals in economic and social activities among enterprises, other business entities, and social organizations. If various departments have established the electronic seal systems, such systems shall be connected for mutual recognition.

The electronic seals, electronic business licenses and identity QR codes shall be provided to the business entities at the same time free of charge. The relevant government department shall promote and expand the application scenarios of electronic business licenses and identity QR codes. The business entities may choose to engrave physical seals out of their actual needs.

Article 34

The electronic signatures that conform with the conditions set out by legal provisions and are reliable when the enterprises apply for government service, shall have the same legal effect with the handwritten signatures or sealings; the electronic seals shall have the same legal effect as the physical seals; the electronic licenses shall have the same legal effect as the paper licenses, unless otherwise provided by laws or administrative rules.

Article 35

The enterprise fixed assets investment projects shall be subject to the notification and commitment system, the scope of which shall be prepared by the municipal development and reform department, approved by the Municipal People's Government and then announced to the public.

Article 36

This Municipality shall implement a classification and level-based approval and supervision mechanism against the risks of construction projects. The municipal departments of housing and urban-rural development, transport and others shall formulate the risk classification standards and risk levels for various construction projects, and collaborate with the municipal departments of development and reform, planning and natural resources and others to practice differentiated approval, supervision and administration.

This Municipality shall implement the integrated reform that covers all the processes and areas, strengthen the connection between project construction and approval of planned land use, and promote the integrated handling of similar matters across different departments at the same stage. The municipal housing and urban-rural development department shall rely on the Integrated Online Platform to take the lead in establishing and improving the unified construction project approval management system to ensure "application only by one form, one service window acceptance, one integrated online service portal, completion in a limited period, and issuance of all certificates at one time" for various approval stages of project approval, land use, planning, construction, and completion acceptance, and promote the approval of construction projects for the entire process to be handled online. The planning permit and construction permit of a construction project under social investment may practice one-stop handling.

The municipal and district people's governments shall establish construction project approval and review centers, and apply the construction project approval management system to implement a one-stop service model including joint meeting review, joint supervision and inspection and integrated acceptance of project completion.

This Municipality shall strengthen the pre-construction service for major construction projects, and carry out a pilot Tolerance for Deficiencies and Supplement Later mechanism during approval process for non-critical elements that do not affect safety or public interests to allow the market entities to complete relevant materials before the record-filing of completion acceptance.

Article 37

This Municipality shall explore the architect accountability system and optimize the management process of feasibility research, planning, design, tender and bidding, construction design, project management, completion acceptance and others to give a full play to the professional expertise of the architects and the leading role of technology in the entire process.

Article 38

This Municipality shall implement an insurance system for potential defects in residential project quality. For other projects, unless subject to supervision as required by the State, the exploration shall be made to allow the development units to purchase the potential defects insurance of construction project quality, in which the insurance company appoints risk management agencies to administer the construction projects.

Article 39

This Municipality shall carry out area assessments of the industrial bases, industrial communities and other areas, and implement a list-based administration of the areas and matters to be assessed. The entities in charge of administering the areas shall refer to the list to organize water resources assessment, traffic impact assessment, water and soil conservation plan review, geographical disaster risk assessment, lightning strike risk assessment or environment impact assessment and other assessments. The assessments shall be completed before the land transfer, and the assessment results shall be announced to the public and incorporated as the administrative basis by relevant departments.

Where enterprises and other business entities carry out construction projects in the industrial bases or industrial communities that have already been assessed, no separate assessments shall be required, unless otherwise provided by the State and this Municipality.

Article 40

The completion acceptance and real estate registration of the new low-risk industrial projects with social investment of the enterprises in this Municipality shall be handled jointly, and the enterprises may, after the completion acceptance, obtain the relevant acceptance certificates and the electronic real estate certificates at one time, and the paper certificates on the spot.

This Municipality shall continue to deepen the facilitation measures for real estate registration, promote the facilitation measures such as integrated collection of application information from transaction, taxation, registration and other departments and one-time collection of taxes and fees online. The registration and tax collection of enterprises shall be handled jointly in the offline handling section of the real estate registration agency for enterprises. The price declared by the taxpayer shall be used as the basis for tax calculation, and the deed tax payable shall be calculated on the spot. The enterprises may pay the tax and receive the certificate on the spot. If the taxation department discovers in the subsequent supervision that the taxpayer's declared price is obviously low without justifiable reasons, it shall verify and collect the due tax payment according to the applicable provisions. The real estate registration agency shall collaborate with the public utility enterprises and institutions to achieve simultaneous handling of the account transfer of electricity, water supply and drainage, gas, Internet, and cable network and real estate registration. This Municipality shall promote the reform that facilitates the application of real estate mortgage registration at commercial banks.

Any entity or individual that needs inquiry may, according to the relevant provisions of the State and this Municipality on real estate information inquiry, use the self-service terminal, Integrated Online Platform and other channels to search the status, rights status, cadastral map and other information of the real estate registered in this Municipality and the right-holder information of the non-residential real estate under the ownership of legal persons or unincorporated organizations. Right-holders who inquire about real estate registration information under their ownership may obtain the inquiry results certification in this Municipality.

Article 41

This Municipality shall rely on the municipal and district talent service centers to provide professional facilitation services such as talent introduction, settlement, exchange, evaluation and consultation.

This Municipality shall provide convenience for the entry, exit, stay, residence, work, study and living of high-level foreign talents. The application for work permits or residence permits through the Foreigners Working and Residence Single Window shall be handled at one time within seven working days.

Article 42

This Municipality shall use the International Trade Single Window to provide the applicants with whole-process digital services for import and export goods declaration, declaration of means of transportation, tax and fee payment, trade permit, application for the Certificate of Origin and others, and promote trade financing, credit insurance, export tax rebates, and other applications with local characteristics.

Any departments that impose charges and fees shall declare the charging standards in the International Trade Single Window for one-stop inquiry and handling of port-related charges and fees. The municipal departments of ports, transport, development and reform, market regulation and others shall strengthen the administration of port-related charges and fees collection.

This Municipality shall use the International Trade Single Window to advance the trade declaration connection with other economies，to promote information interconnection, and to facilitate enterprises to engage in cross-border businesses.

Article 43

This Municipality shall apply various port customs clearance facilitation measures to reduce the time for port supervision of goods and port-related logistics operations, so that the goods status and payment information of each link of customs clearance and logistics are traceable to facilitate enterprises to carry out operations in various links.

This Municipality shall optimize port supervision, encourage the enterprises to declare customs clearance and go through customs clearance procedures in advance. Any fault in the declaration for customs clearance shall be handled according to relevant fault-tolerance mechanism.

The eligible enterprises shall, according to the relevant provisions, qualify for management measures such as check and release before inspection, release before paying taxes, and release before correcting customs clearance forms. The Customs shall announce the overall customs clearance time for the customs declaration enterprises.

Article 44

The Municipality shall establish an integrated tax and fee declaration platform for taxpayers and fee payers to promote the combined declaration and payment of relevant taxes and fees. Relevant departments shall simplify the materials and procedures for paying taxes and fees, reduce the time spent on paying taxes and fees, improve the service capabilities of online taxation bureaus and smart taxation service portals, promote the use of electronic invoices, and improve the tax and fee dispute resolution mechanism.

This Municipality shall strictly implement various national policies for reducing taxes and fees, and actively carry out publicity and guidance activities to ensure the effective implementation of such policies.

Article 45

The intellectual property department shall prepare and improve the list of public service matters for intellectual property to clarify the contents, time limit and conditions for handling relevant matters of intellectual property.

The intellectual property department shall optimize the intellectual property service handling process and promote the centralized acceptance of public service matters in patents, trademarks and other fields.

Article 46

The enterprise may choose the location of its main office within this Municipality, and register it as its domicile according to law. All districts and all departments shall provide convenience to the enterprise changing domicile across districts, and shall set up no obstacles to such change.

Any such cross-district changes that are difficult to address at the district level shall be coordinated, resolved, and carried out by the Municipal Serving Enterprise Joint Meeting mechanism.

Article 47

The enterprise may apply for deregistration on the online business registration service platform of this Municipality, and the departments of market regulation, tax, human resources and social security, and others shall conduct categorized dealing and simultaneous processing, and conclude the relevant matters once and for all.

Where no creditor's rights or debts are incurred, the creditor's rights or debts have been satisfied, or the liquidation expenses, employee wages, social insurance payment, statutory compensation, payable taxes (including late fees and fines) are not incurred or have been satisfied, and all the investors have made written commitment to bear liability for the truth of the aforesaid, the expedited deregistration procedures may apply. The enterprise shall publicize the written commitment letter and deregistration application on the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System for a period of 20 days. If there is no objection during the publicity period, the registration authority may process the deregistration for the enterprise on the spot.

Chapter IV Public Services

Article 48

The municipal economy and informatization department shall organize the city-wide establishment of the enterprise service system, rely on the Shanghai Enterprise Service Cloud to realize unified disclosure of enterprise-related policies, inclusion of all professional service agencies and one-time acceptance of enterprise requests.

The municipal and district economy and informatization departments shall establish small and medium-sized enterprise service centers to accept various requests and improve the request rapid feedback mechanism. Ordinary issues shall be settled within 5 working days, and complicated issues within 15 workings days; explanations shall be made to the enterprise if the issue cannot be settled.

All districts shall establish a grid-based enterprise service model, designate staff in towns, townships, sub-district communities, industrial parks and office buildings to respond to the enterprises’ requests.

Article 49

The municipal economy and informatization department shall collaborate with the municipal departments of finance and others to establish and improve the unified application system for the municipal fiscal funds-based enterprise-benefiting policies to provide a one-stop service of inquiry, subscription, matching and application for enterprises. Relevant departments shall ensure that the policies directly benefiting enterprises quickly accessible in an orderly manner. All districts shall refer to the municipal system to establish their own systems and corresponding service mechanisms. All districts and all departments shall strictly implement the the fiscal funds-based policies of the State and this Municipality that support the small and medium-sized enterprise development and provide convenient services.

All districts shall establish a separate service window for the the fiscal funds-based enterprise-benefiting policies and others, and the districts may establish a comprehensive service window for the the enterprise-benefiting policies if the conditions permit.

Article 50

This Municipality shall establish a communication mechanism between the government and enterprises, and listen and respond to the reasonable requests of enterprises and other business entities in a timely manner through survey, meeting, questionnaire, new media and other means.

This Municipality shall establish an advisory committee on optimizing business environment to collect and respond to the requests of market entities on business environment, provide decision-making advice for business environment reform, and promote fine-tuned implementation of business environment policies.

Article 51

This Municipality shall encourage the electricity, water supply and drainage, gas and Internet and other public utility enterprises and institutions to provide whole-process agency services for enterprises and other business entities. Such public utility enterprises and institutions shall also be encouraged to fully provide online services by setting up a new service function on the general portal of the Integrated Online Platform to streamline service procedures and reduce application materials and processing time.

This Municipality shall implement a reliability supervision plan for public infrastructure services. The public utility enterprises and institutions shall guarantee the normal and stable operations of service facilities and ensure the quality of supply is in conformity with the provisions of the State and this Municipality. The relevant competent departments shall strengthen the supervision over the reliability of services provided by such public utility enterprises and institutions, and issue and implement the performance administration measures based on the service reliability.

The public utility enterprises and institutions shall promote the standardization of access and service to ensure the transparency of access and service standards, and provide related extended services and one-stop services. The public utility enterprises and institutions shall mark the prices of chargeable items clearly, and perform duties of costs information report and disclosure according to the applicable provisions.

This Municipality shall implement a joint application and installation system for water supply and drainage, electricity, gas and Internet, and allow one form application submitted to an integrated service window, joint exploration, one-stop service and designated inquiry window. If any joint application and installation requires any road excavation approval, there shall be an interoperability of handling of joint application and installation and road excavation approval.

Article 52

This Municipality shall fully implement the unified registration system of security interests over movables and rights. The parties may, on their own, complete the registration of security interests over movables and rights subject to the scope of unified registration through the unified movables financing registration and publicity system of the Credit Reference Center of the People's Bank of China.

This Municipality shall encourage the financial institutions to provide unsecured credit loans for small and medium-sized enterprises that operate in good faith, improve the credit products for small and medium-sized enterprises, optimize the efficiency in connecting financing demands with supply and in loan approval and issuance, provide support for technology enterprises in life-cycle comprehensive financial services, put more efforts in nurturing technology enterprises, encourage the listing of eligible technology enterprises, and encourage the financial institutions to continuously promote green financial products and service innovation.

This Municipality shall establish and improve the clarification mechanism of litigation-related information related to the small and medium-sized enterprises to prevent the incomplete information obtained by the financial institutions from affecting the normal loaning to the small and medium-sized enterprises.

Article 53

This Municipality shall establish a policy-based financing guarantee fund for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, establish and improve the financing guarantee system, and provide credit enhancement services for the financing of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The municipal department of finance shall collaborate with the municipal financial regulation and other departments to establish a credit risk compensation and reward mechanism.

This Municipality shall promote public data opening and big-data application in inclusive financing, and rely on the comprehensive credit service platform for small and medium-sized enterprises financing to legally share with the financial institutions the government service data including the data about market regulation, taxation, immovable registration and environmental protection, and public utility data including the data about electricity, water supply and drainage, gas and Internet, provide credit enhancement service for small and medium-sized enterprises financing, and protect personal information and business secrets according to law.

Article 54

This Municipality shall support the development of industrial parks and advocate the integration of industrial and urban development. The relevant government departments shall set up government service windows in the industrial parks based on the real needs. The management and operation entities of the industrial parks are encouraged to establish enterprise service acceptance offices to provide policy consulting and agency services such as enterprise start-up, project construction, and talents services.

Where the management and operation entities of the industrial parks use recommendation letters and others to provide certification and guarantee services for the enterprises in the industrial parks, the relevant government departments shall give support.

Article 55

This Municipality shall support the development of the innovation and entrepreneurship clusters and support the development of various innovation and entrepreneurship carriers including the science and technology enterprise incubators, makerspaces and others. The eligible innovation and entrepreneurship carriers shall be granted with tax incentives and financial support according to applicable provisions.

The higher education institutions and scientific research institutes are encouraged and supported to establish professional teams, appoint third-party service agencies or in other means to promote the transfer and transformation of scientific and technological achievements.

Article 56

This Municipality shall implement a catalog-based administration of major industrial projects, and make dynamic adjustments to it. The municipal and district people’s governments shall establish a liaison and coordinating mechanism for major projects to provide the enterprises with whole-process service guarantee.

The municipal economy and informatization department shall promote the establishment of a municipal investment promotion platform, formulate and publish the industrial map of Shanghai, and promote the key projects information database and carriers resource database to advance the precise matching of projects and the industrial map.

The municipal commerce department shall promote and improve the overseas investment attraction network.

Article 57

This Municipality shall accelerate the construction of a public legal service system, integrate public legal service resources such as lawyers, notaries, and judicial authentication and others, and use public legal service centers and public legal service hotlines to improve the quality and level of public legal services.

The lawyers are encouraged to innovate the legal service models, and use their expertise to help the small and medium-sized enterprises to effectively prevent legal risks and resolve various disputes in a timely and efficient manner.

This Municipality shall continue to optimize the notary services, and realize the "Self-service, Online Handling, and One-off Handling" of simple notary matters and notary information inquiry.

The authentication agencies shall be encouraged to optimize the authentication procedures to improve the efficiency. If there is an agreed time limit with the clients, the authentication shall be completed within such agreed time limit; if there is no agreement, the authentication shall be completed within 30 working days, except for the authentication cases with great complexity, or as specifically provided by laws, rules or departmental regulations.

Chapter V Supervision and Law Enforcement

Article 58

The relevant government departments shall, according to the principle of encouraging innovation, practice tolerant and prudential supervision over new technologies, new industries, new forms of business, new business models and others, formulate and implement corresponding supervision rules and standards based on their nature and features, and leave room for development while ensuring quality and safety, and shall not impose prohibition or simply refuse supervision.

This Municipality shall establish and improve the tolerant and prudential supervision system, promote the exemption of administrative penalty against the minor violation of law according to law and exercise law enforcement supervision over its implementation. The municipal administrative departments shall formulate the list of such exemption for their own systems, and implement it according to law.

Article 59

The municipal department of approval reform shall collaborate with relevant administrative departments to prepare the catalog of supervision matters, clarify the competent supervision entities, subjects under supervision, supervision measures and handling methods, and announce such list to the public. The catalog of supervision matters shall be subject to dynamic adjustment.

This Municipality shall implement differentiated and classification-based supervision over and administration of inspection objects based on their credit status and risk level. All departments shall establish the incentive, warning and discipline mechanisms based on the classification. The procedures for key-area supervision shall be subject to regulation, and the special sectors and key areas in food, drugs, construction, transportation, emergency response and others that directly concern public security and people’s life and health shall be subject to the full-coverage and whole-process key-area supervision.

The departments that practice classification-based supervision and the organizations that exercise the function of public administration shall formulate the detailed implementation rules of the classification-based supervision, and announce them to the public.

Article 60

Relevant government departments shall formulate their own annual plan for law enforcement inspection and announce it to the public by the end of March each year.

The annual plan for law enforcement inspection shall include the entities, scope of objects, methods, items, ratio of inspection and others.

Article 61

Relevant government departments shall announce the administrative penalty information of the business entities to the public for a period of three years according to applicable provisions, unless otherwise provided by laws, rules, regulations or provisions of the State.

Article 62

This Municipality shall promote the use of specialized credit reports to replace the violation records certification issued by relevant administrative departments. The specialized credit reports may be obtained from the Integrated Online Platform and others. All districts and all municipal departments shall collect relevant public credit information in a comprehensive, accurate and timely manner to the municipal public credit information service platform based on the requirements of the State and this Municipality.

Relevant administrative departments shall make full use of credit information, provide convenience to the honest entities such as prioritized handling services and simplified procedures, strictly regulate the determination of the list of joint punishment and discipline, and carry out joint punishment and discipline for dishonesty based on laws, rules and regulations.

Article 63

This Municipality shall establish and improve the public credit information repair mechanism, carry out the classification and level-based repair system, specify the conditions, standards, procedures and other factors of dishonesty information repair, and optimize the sharing and mutual recognition of public credit information repair results among government portals and credit service agencies such as the Credit China (Shanghai) portal and the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (Shanghai).

The eligible business entities may, after the expiration of the minimum publicity period for administrative penalty information, apply for repair according to the applicable provisions, and terminate the publicity in advance. The general administrative penalty information shall be publicized for a minimum period of three months. The minimum publicity period for administrative penalty information in food, pharmaceutical products, special purpose equipment, production safety, and fire protection shall be one year. The information of the administrative penalty from summary procedures, the warnings, and the circular for criticism shall not be publicized. The repair of seriously dishonest entities list shall be made by the departments which determine such dishonest acts according to law.

Where the dishonesty information is to be repaired by the Credit China (Shanghai) and other credit information portals, the repair results shall be shared with relevant departments and systems within three working days; if the dishonesty information is to be repaired by the departments which determine it, the repair results shall be shared with the Credit China (Shanghai) and other credit information portals. All departments shall simultaneously delete the dishonesty information publicized in relevant portals after the applicant’s credit is repaired. The credit service agencies that collect and use the dishonesty information shall delete relevant information from the inquiry interface of their systems.

Where laws, rules, regulations or the State provides otherwise, such provisions shall prevail.

Article 64

This Municipality shall implement in full scale the systems of administrative law enforcement publicity, recording of the entire process of administrative law enforcement, and legality review of major administrative law enforcement decisions, and promote strict, regulated, fair and civilized administrative law enforcement through assessments, regular reports, coordination and guidance, sharing of law enforcement data, and others.

All administrative law enforcement departments shall strengthen collaboration based on regulatory needs, specify the collaboration procedures, and improve the efficacy and efficiency of cross-department and cross-area joint law enforcement.

This Municipality shall deepen the reform of integrated administrative law enforcement, promote the relatively centralized exercise of administrative penalty power, and coordinate the allocation of administrative law enforcement resources.

This Municipality shall establish and improve the joint collaboration mechanism that realizes the connection among approval, regulation, law enforcement, and court trial.

Article 65

This Municipality shall rely on the "Internet Plus Regulation" system and the Shanghai unified and integrated law enforcement system to promote the interconnection of regulation systems among various departments, strengthen the collection, sharing and application of regulatory information, advance off-site regulation such as remote regulation, mobile regulation, early warning, prevention and control, and provide support for regulation by "random selection of inspection objects and inspectors and timely public disclosure", classification-based regulation, credit-based regulation, joint law enforcement, and others. The business secrets of market entities involved in the course of regulation shall be kept confidential by all the departments according to law.

Article 66

All relevant departments in market regulation shall carry out administrative inspections through randomly selecting inspection objects and randomly sending law enforcement staff, except for the special industries and key areas that directly concern public security and people's life and health.

The frequency of random inspection and the probability of being randomly inspected shall be correlated with the credit rating and risk level of the entities subject to inspection. Multiple inspection items targeting the same inspection entity shall be merged or included in the scope of cross-department joint random inspections to regulate the administrative inspections and avoid arbitrary and repeated inspections.

All relevant departments in market regulation shall promptly publicize the random inspections and results through the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System and other platforms.

Article 67

All administrative law enforcement departments that carry out administrative coercion shall observe the principle of legality, appropriateness and the combination of education and coercion; no administrative coercion shall be imposed if any non-coercive means can achieve the goal of administration; the administrative coercion may not be imposed if the violation of law is minor or causes minimum harm to the society; if the administrative coercion is necessary, it should be limited to the necessary scope to minimize the impact on the normal production and operation of market entities.

The relevant departments of the Municipal People's Government shall explore to create the list of violations of law not subject to administrative coercive measures.

Article 68

The relevant departments of the Municipal People's Government shall regulate the exercise of administrative discretion in a scientific manner based on the provisions of the State and this Municipality, establish and improve the criteria of the exercise of administrative discretion and put such criteria under dynamic management. All administrative law enforcement departments shall regulate the application of the administrative discretion criteria based on the relevant provisions of the State and this Municipality.

When the law enforcement departments impose administrative penalty, carry out administrative inspections and other law enforcement acts, the catch-all clauses in the enumeration provisions shall be prudently applied. If the catch-all clauses need to be clarified by the relevant administrative departments of this Municipality, the relevant competent municipal departments shall clarify the circumstances and rules of specific application.

Article 69

The municipal and district people's governments and their departments shall not take such measures as requiring the market entities of certain industries or sectors to suspend overall production or business in relevant areas, unless, with the approval of the competent authorities, such measures concern people's life and safety, major or grave accidents happen or major national events are held. If the measures including suspension of overall production or business are adopted, such measures shall be communicated in writing to the enterprises in advance or announced to the public, unless otherwise provided by laws, rules or regulations.

Chapter VI Rule of Law Safeguard

Article 70

When enacting local rules, regulations and administrative normative documents that are closely related to the production and operation activities of enterprises and other business entities, this Municipality shall solicit opinions from the public through newspapers, internet platforms or others, take full consideration of the opinions of enterprises and other business entities, industry associations and chambers of commerce, and establish and improve the feedback mechanism for the adoption of opinions.

The local rules, regulations and administrative normative documents that concern the rights and obligations of enterprises and other business entities shall be promptly announced to the public in easily accessible means. The normative documents shall be entered into this Municipality's unified system of administrative normative documents database. The local rules, regulations and administrative normative documents shall be propagated and interpreted at the time when they are issued. The local rules, regulations and administrative normative documents that are closely related to foreign investment, international trade and others shall be provided with English translations or abstracts.

Article 71

When enacting the normative documents or policy measures that are closely related to the production and operation activities of enterprises and other business entities, the people’s governments at all levels in this Municipality and their relevant departments shall conduct legality review and the enacting authorities shall carry out collective deliberations.

When drafting or enacting the local rules, regulations, normative documents or other policy measures that concern the economic activities of enterprises and other business entities, such drafts or enactments shall be subject to fair competition review based on applicable provisions. The third-party agencies shall be encouraged to participate in the work on fair competition review.

Any entity or individual shall have the right to report any policy measures that allegedly violate the standards of fair competition review. The enacting authorities shall establish and improve the response mechanism for the complaints and reports related to fair competition review, and promptly correct the policy measures that exclude or restrict competition; any policy measure that is applicable to the escape clause shall be reported for record-filing to the joint meeting of fair competition review at the same level.

Article 72

When enacting the policy measures that are closely related to the production and operation activities of enterprises and other business entities, the people's governments at all levels in this Municipality and their corresponding departments shall leave the necessary period of adaptation for market entities, except where national security is involved and failure to become effective upon promulgation will hinder implementation.

Article 73

This Municipality shall improve the diversified labor dispute resolution mechanism, promote the priority of mediation and improve the labor dispute resolution efficiency.

The municipal human resources and social security department shall smooth the channels for workers to safeguard their rights, improve the mechanism for mediation before bringing a labor dispute case, strengthen the efforts on supervision and law enforcement, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers according to law.

Article 74

This Municipality shall actively improve the diversified dispute resolution mechanism that properly integrates and coordinates mediation, arbitration, administrative decision, administrative reconsideration, and litigation, give full play to the functions of non-litigation dispute resolution centers at all levels, support the establishment of dispute resolution agencies in professional sectors of finance, construction projects, shipping, intellectual property and others, and strengthen the construction of digital dispute resolution platforms to provide the parties with efficient and convenient dispute resolution channels.

This Municipality shall establish the one-stop diversified dispute resolution working mechanism that integrates mediation, arbitration and litigation for foreign-related commercial disputes to provide the parties with diversified, convenient and efficient dispute resolution services.

This Municipality shall support the foreign well-known arbitration and dispute resolution agencies to establish business offices in this Municipality based on the applicable provisions to engage in foreign-related arbitration for civil and commercial disputes in international commerce, maritime affairs, investment and other sectors. The people's courts in this Municipality shall establish the working mechanism of issuing investigation orders in support of the hearing of arbitration cases.

Article 75

The commercial mediation organizations of any kind shall prepare a mediator roster and announce it to the public. The mediators consisting such roster shall not be restricted by nationality, gender, residence and others. The parties may choose the mediators outside the scope of such roster.

The commercial mediation shall be conducted based on the voluntariness of and equality between the parties. Any mediation organization or mediator that may have a conflict of interest with the case concerned shall promptly disclose such conflict and recuse themselves, and the parties have the right to change the mediation organization or apply for recusal of mediators. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, the mediator serving in the commercial mediation case shall recuse himself/herself from serving as arbitrators in the same or a related case.

The mediation organizations shall regularly publish the statistical data on various types of commercial disputes resolved through mediation.

Where a civil case is resolved by means of mediation, the case acceptance fee shall be halved according to law.

Article 76

This Municipality shall support the people's courts at all levels to adjudicate all the cases related to market entities in a law-based and fair manner, equally protect the legitimate rights and interests of various market entities, and support the people's procuratorates at all levels to exercise legal supervision over the adjudication of people's courts.

The people's courts at all levels in this Municipality shall, according to law, give play to the role of pre-trial conferences in fixing issues, exchange of evidence, and promoting the use of mediation and others to improve the quality of pre-trial preparation work and improve the quality and efficiency of court trials.

This Municipality shall, based on the unified arrangements of the State, strengthen the establishment of international commercial dispute adjudication organizations, support such organizations to connect with the international commercial rules, and accelerate the formation of adjudication mechanism and institutions that adapt to the needs of international commercial dispute resolution in Shanghai.

This Municipality shall strengthen the establishment of a system to address the source issues of judgment enforcement difficulties, promote and improve the collaborative mechanism for enforcement, and support the people’s courts to strengthen and improve the work for enforcement. The relevant government departments, people’s procuratorates, people's organizations, enterprises and public institutions, financial institutions and others shall improve their cooperation and collaboration with the people's courts in enforcement, and coordinate in promoting the quality and efficiency of enforcement in this Municipality.

This Municipality shall, according to the arrangement of the State, carry out pilot programs in the third-party supervision and assessment mechanism for the crime-related enterprise compliance, and conduct investigations, assessments, supervision and inspections over the enterprise compliance commitments, and make the inspection results as an important reference for the people's procuratorate's handling of cases. The specific implementation measures shall be formulated by the Municipal People's Procuratorate in collaboration with relevant departments.

Article 77

When enterprises and other business entities are attending to registration formalities such as such as incorporation, corporate changes or record-filings or annual report filings, the market regulation departments shall inform them of filling in the address for service of legal instruments. The enterprises and other business entities shall voluntarily fill in the address for the service of legal instruments; if not, the address of the registered domicile shall be determined by law as the address for the people's courts at all levels and administrative departments in this Municipality to serve the legal instruments.

Article 78

The people's courts at all levels in this Municipality shall improve the construction of online litigation service platforms, advance the whole-process online case handling model, and strictly abide by the provisions of laws and judicial interpretations on regulating the extension of time limit for concluding a trial and postponement of court hearings for civil and commercial cases. The parties that submit the complaint materials by filing the case online do not need to submit the hard copies.

The Municipal High People's Court shall improve the construction of a data publicity platform for judicial quality and efficiency, promote the real-time and regular publicity of data related to business environment, and improve the judicial openness.

The Municipal High People's Court shall establish and improve the rules and standards for the selection, evaluation and performance review of intermediary agencies engaged in judicially related services such as authentication, asset appraisal, auditing and price review, announce them to the public and regularly notify relevant departments of such review and evaluation results.

The relevant departments shall establish the information sharing mechanism with the people's courts, support the people's courts to inquire about the identity, property rights, market transactions and other information of market entities according to law, support the people's courts to carry out online investigation and control and law-based handling of the real estate, movables, bank deposits, equity, intellectual property rights and other property rights involved in the case, to improve the efficiency of property investigation, control and compulsory enforcement.

The relevant departments shall improve coordination and collaboration with the people's courts and put the persons who refuse to perform their obligations arising from the effective judgments into the list of punishment and discipline for dishonesty to strengthen the punishment and discipline of the dishonest persons subject to enforcement.

Article 79

This Municipality shall advance a market-oriented, law-based and convenient bankruptcy system, strengthen the protection of reorganization through market-oriented mechanisms, explore the establishment of reorganization identification, pre-reorganization and other bankruptcy rescue mechanisms, and explore the mechanisms for streamlining bankruptcy cases and quick trial of summary bankruptcy cases to simplify the bankruptcy process.

This Municipality shall establish and improve the enterprise bankruptcy coordination mechanism jointly led by the Municipal People’s Government and the Municipal High People's Court and joined by other relevant departments to coordinate and resolve the issues arising from the enterprise bankruptcy in this Municipality, and improve the efficacy and efficiency of public services and public affairs handling in the area of bankruptcy.

This Municipality shall strengthen the policy support for enterprise reorganization and reconciliation, and explore to carry out pilot programs in specialized government financing guarantee to promote the financial institutions to provide necessary bailout financing for the enterprises under reorganization or reconciliation proceedings.

The people's courts at all levels in this Municipality shall, based on relevant laws and judicial interpretations, establish a mechanism in which the creditors or shareholders whose rights and interests are concerned or affected are allowed to participate in the voting of the draft reorganization plan to promote the timely acquisition of reorganization relief by ailing enterprises with operational value.

Article 80

Where an enterprise legal person in this Municipality is subject to the debt liquidation or reorganization proceedings as prescribed in the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of the People's Republic of China, the directors and senior managers of such enterprise shall faithfully and diligently perform their duties and promptly take reasonable measures to avoid further deterioration and property loss of the enterprise.

This Municipality shall optimize the bankruptcy handling mechanism specifically for small and micro enterprises, promote the rapid liquidation of non-sustainable small and micro enterprises and the effective reorganization of sustainable small and micro enterprises.

The people's courts at all levels in this Municipality shall carry out explorations for cross-border bankruptcy working mechanisms according to law, improve the quality and efficacy in recognizing and assisting the cross-border bankruptcy proceedings and in recognizing and enforcing the overseas arbitration awards, and strengthen the judicial cooperation and communication in cross-border bankruptcy.

The people's courts at all levels in this Municipality shall, according to law, determine the order of environmental damage compensation in bankruptcy property payment and the means of payment.

Article 81

This Municipality shall strengthen the connection between the whole-process online case handling platform of the people's courts and government service platform, and establish and improve the online inquiry mechanism that integrates the information on the immovable, vehicles, banking accountings, securities, original registration files, taxation, social insurance, and housing provident fund of the bankrupt enterprises and on the identity of concerned parties, and the online processing mechanism for the unsealing and disposal of bankruptcy property.

This Municipality shall establish a mechanism to safeguard the rights and interests of the bankrupt enterprise employees. The human resources and social security departments at all levels shall collaborate to provide guidance on employment policies, employment services, protection of unpaid wages, and transfer of employee social insurance relationships during the disposal of bankrupt enterprises, in order to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of employees.

After the bankrupt enterprise performs relevant obligations according to relevant provisions, the enterprise's abnormal status shall be automatically terminated. Revenue of debt restructuring obtained by the enterprise as a result of reorganization shall be subject to relevant corporate income tax policies according to relevant provisions of the State. The property tax, urban land use tax and others related to the bankrupt enterprise shall be reduced or exempted by the tax authorities based on law.

This Municipality shall establish a publicity mechanism for enterprise bankruptcy information, and rely on the Credit China (Shanghai) portal to disclose the information on bankruptcy debtors, bankruptcy administrators, progress of bankruptcy proceedings, bankruptcy adjudication instruments, and others.

Article 82

Where the opinions on nominating the creditors or changing bankruptcy administrator at the creditor's meeting conform with the statutory requirements, the people's courts in this Municipality shall approve such nomination or change according to law.

This Municipality shall promote and guarantee the bankruptcy administrator to perform the duties in bankruptcy proceedings. The bankruptcy administrator who holds the people's court's ruling on accepting the bankruptcy petition and the decision on appointing the administrator shall have the right to take over, investigate, manage and dispose of the bankruptcy property according to law. When the bankruptcy administrator performs the statutory obligations and proceed with the bankruptcy related matters, the relevant departments shall provide cooperation.

The disposal of the enterprise's significant property by the bankruptcy administrator shall be subject to the item-by-item voting at the creditor's meeting.

Where the bankruptcy administrator applies for enterprise deregistration based on the people's court's ruling on terminating the bankruptcy proceedings or the liquidation team applies for deregistration based on the people's court's decision on terminating the compulsory liquidation, the market regulation departments shall proceed with such application according to law.

This Municipality shall improve the hierarchy-based administration mechanism for bankruptcy administrators and make the bankruptcy administrators more professional and better regulated.

The Municipal Association of Bankruptcy Administrators shall strengthen industrial discipline and training to improve the administrator's capability and capacity in performing duties.

Article 83

This Municipality shall establish a rights protection mechanism for handling the complaints about business environment. Any entity or individual may make complaints or reports about business environment through the 12345 Citizen Service Hotline, Shanghai Enterprise Service Cloud, Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Service Center, Integrated Online Platform and others.

The relevant departments shall smooth the feedback channels for such complaints and reports, and ensure the reasonable and legitimate requests of market entities are responded and handled in a timely manner. If any issue cannot be resolved, a prompt notification and explanation shall be given.

The municipal and district people's governments and their relevant administrative departments may appoint the people's congress deputies, CPPCC members, experts, scholars, representatives from industry associations, chambers of commerce, professional service sectors, enterprises, and communities and others as public supervisors. Such public supervisors may promptly collect and report the information about the clues, opinions and suggestions of issues related to business environment when performing their own job duties to exercise the function of supervision.

Article 84

This Municipality shall explore the establishment of internal whistleblower system in ecology, environment and resources protection, food and drug safety and public health and security and other areas to play the role of social supervision, reward the people who report about serious violation of law, rule or regulation, or about major hidden risks or dangers, and impose strict protection over such people.

Article 85

This Municipality shall establish a rule of law safeguarding community for optimizing business environment that consists of government departments, schools with professional advantage, social organizations and others, smooth the channels for policy and system design, implementation, feedback and communication, focus on resolving and coordinating the institutional bottlenecks and other systemic and mechanism issues in the business environment construction, and provide intellectual support for various districts and the departments in advancing the business environment construction.

Article 86

This Municipality shall explore and create a new rule of law publicity model suitable for market entities, and adopt methods such as citing cases to interpret the law and virtual scenarios to improve the efficacy and efficiency of rule of law publicity.

This Municipality shall follow the principle of "whoever enforces the law shall propagate the law" and "whoever provides service shall propagate the law", and explore to incorporate the work on rule of law publicity for optimizing business environment into the assessment of rule of law publicity accountability system.

Article 87

The standing committees of the municipal and district people's congresses shall strengthen the supervision over the business environment optimization in their own areas through listening to special reports and carrying out law enforcement inspections.

The standing committees of the municipal and district people's congresses shall give full play to the role of deputies by organizing the deputies to carry out special surveys or inspections over the business environment optimization to collect and reflect the opinions and suggestions of various market entities and urge the relevant parties to implement the measures for optimizing business environment.

Chapter VII Legal Liabilities

Article 88

Where any provisions of the laws or administrative rules have prescribed the penalty on the acts that violate these Regulations, such provisions shall prevail.

Article 89

The people's governments at all levels in this Municipality and their departments and staff that commit any of the following acts in the work for optimizing business environment shall be ordered to make corrections by relevant departments, and shall be held accountable according to law if the circumstances are serious:

1. violating the working requirements of the Integrated Online Platform by limiting the service channels for market entities;

2. refusing to make corrections on matters under real-name bad reviews with clear-cut facts and reasonable requests;

3. illegally making obstacles to the change of enterprise’s domicile;

4. obstructing the bankruptcy administrators from performing their duties as prescribed by law;

5. other nonperformance of duties for optimizing business environment or acts damaging the business environment.

Chapter VIII Supplementary Provision

Article 90

These Regulations shall be effective as of April 10, 2020.