Seventeen cities in China, including Nanjing of Jiangsu Province, have been approved by the State Council to carry out pilot projects for the innovative development of service trade.
The two-year projects start from July 1 this year and will involve several opening up policies closely connected to local residents’ life.
In financial service sector, the new policies allow solely foreign-funded banks, Sino-foreign equity joint banks and branches of foreign banks to apply for RMB business when submitting their business license application.
Under the new policies, Nanjing residents will find it easier to conduct self-driving tours to overseas destinations and on the other hand, foreigners will enjoy lower costs during their visits to Nanjing too. The pilot cities and regions are required to improve supervision and regulation of cross-border self-driving tours. Overseas travel agencies are allowed to cooperate with domestic enterprises in expanding self-driving tours products. Entry and exit procedures for self-driving vehicles including yachts and automobiles will be simplified by measures such as guarantee systems, which will reduce the costs of inbound tourists.
The pilot cities and regions will also conduct trials in delegating the examination and approval power for foreign-funded tourism projects to government at different levels.
In addition, Nanjing will further open its doors to foreign workers as the policies allow qualified foreigners to practice engineering consulting services in pilot areas.
Enterprises in Nanjing will also benefit from the projects, which endow tax exemption on the export of service. To encourage service export, the policies also offer a zero-tax rate to qualified business, bringing immediate benefits to export-oriented enterprises.
（Source：english.jschina.com.cn)
