In the first half of the year, Zhongshan added some 61,700 market entities, ranking fifth in Guangdong Province. The total number of market entities in Zhongshan increased 28.04% year-on-year to about 550,000.

The COVID-19 epidemic has placed a certain pressure on market entities' development. Especially this year, the growth of market entities in Zhongshan has obviously slowed down. Zhongshan Administration for Market Regulation has taken measures to improve its services and created a market-oriented, law-based, international business environment. This has retained a certain growth in the number of market entities, which had exceeded 550,000 by the end of June.

In the first half, Zhongshan Administration for Market Regulation took business environment optimization as its No.1 reform project and issued an implementation plan, which includes 25 practical measures regarding 4 aspects, for building a first-class business environment. Many of the measures have taken effect. For example, all 37 one-for-all business license approval items can be handled online, the average time for starting a business in Zhoingshan has been cut down to 1 working day, and all matters related to business starting can be handled online.