Pilot plans to advance mkt-based allocation

China has unveiled comprehensive pilot reform plans to advance market-based allocation of production factors across 10 key regions, marking the country's latest push to build a high-level socialist market economy system and foster high-quality development, officials and experts said on Thursday.

They said the move will help further facilitate the smooth flow of factors, improve the efficient allocation of various resources and stimulate market vitality.

The State Council issued an approval for launching two-year pilot reform programs to advance market-based allocation of production factors in 10 regions on Wednesday. Pilot regions include the Beijing sub city-center, key cities in southern Jiangsu province; the Hefei metropolitan area in Anhui province; Zhengzhou, Henan province; the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city cluster and the nine mainland cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Li Chunlin, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the latest move will help further improve the factor market system and market mechanisms, promote the smooth cross-regional and cross-sector flow of factor resources, and fully leverage the decisive role of the market in resource allocation.

"That will help achieve optimal efficiency and maximum benefits in resource allocation and drive high-quality economic development. Addressing the key and difficult issues in the current factor markets, it will allow pilot regions to take the lead and explore replicable reform experiences," Li said at a news briefing in Beijing on Wednesday.

"Meanwhile, empowering localities through the pilot reforms and strengthening factor support for economically dynamic regions will stimulate endogenous growth momentum and innovation vitality, and build important engines for high-quality development nationwide," he said.

Experts noted that the pilot plans not only cover traditional production factors such as land, capital and labor, but also clearly set out directions for comprehensive reform pilots on market-based allocation of emerging factors including technology and data. This will further accelerate the building of a unified national market and provide stronger support for cultivating new quality productive forces.

"Relevant measures will promote the deep integration of traditional and emerging factors, accelerate the coupling of industrial, innovation and capital chains, and steer the industrial system toward more advanced, smarter and greener development," said Liu Zhicheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research.