New guidelines unveiled to innovate telecom management, improve business environment: MIIT

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) unveiled new guidelines on Tuesday, vowing to strengthen the innovation of telecom management and aiming to further improve the business environment, and stimulating the vitality of the digital economy. Addressing the concerns of enterprises and the market, the guidelines cover reform and innovation comprehensively across the four dimensions of market access, competition, regulation, and service for the purpose of optimize the business environment in the information and communication sector.

Aiming to improve market access management, the guidelines propose to achieve "one-time application, one-stop approval" for new technologies and applications across various telecom services.

Additionally, the guidelines encourage to expand the opening up of telecom services in pilot areas, further opening up value-added telecom services to foreign investment, and allowing more private-capital involvement in this sector.

"The reform of the second-category value-added telecom services implemented in the free trade zone has now been extended to 21 regions where free trade zones and free trade ports are located. Additionally, measures such as shortening approval time have been taken. According to our research, the approval time for some administrative licenses can be reduced by over 70 percent," said Luo Luojia, deputy director of the Regulatory Department, Policy and Economic Research Institute, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

According to the guidelines, the MIIT will promote flexible regulatory approaches including giving administrative guidance and holding admonition talks, so that routine supervision and inspection would least affect business operations.

The number of telecommunication and internet enterprises in China has reached 169,000, with over 92 percent being privately held enterprises. Also, the number of foreign-invested telecommunication enterprises has increased by over 35 percent year on year, according to data from the MIIT.

"The continuous optimization of the entire process of market access has led to the rapid growth of market entities in the information communication sector. By the end of 2023, the total number of information and communication enterprises had exceeded 160,000," Luo said.

New guidelines unveiled to innovate telecom management, improve business environment: MIIT

The fresh U.S. tariff policy represents protectionism which bucks the trend of the world economy and is bound to pose risks to the United States itself, a Japanese economist said on Saturday.

Hidetoshi Tashiro, chief economist at Japan's Infinity LLC, said Japan's pillar automobile industry will by definition bear the brunt of the U.S. reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on automobiles, with some companies even facing a life-or-death crisis.

However, the expert believes that the U.S. tariff policy will also worsen inflation in the United States and have a negative effect on global trade.

"This tariff policy will only add fuel to the fire, rather than extinguishing it. In the current environment of severe high prices in the U.S., the life of U.S. citizens will become even more difficult. Moreover, under the impact of this tariff policy, global trade volume will clearly shrink. The production of exported goods from various countries will decrease. This tariff policy is completely unreasonable for the development of the global economy, and even for the development of the U.S. economy itself," he said.

The expert believes that the U.S. trade protectionism is at odds with global economic trends.

"The U.S. is no longer engaging in free trade at all, or we can even say it is undermining free trade. It’s not just protectionism, it’s essentially destroying free trade. The United States is disconnecting from the world economy, and this is a very serious issue," said the economist.

US new tariff policy bucks global trend, harms itself: Japanese economist