Improve Port Services

China's State Council has outlined measures to improve port services and support foreign trade. To speed up customs clearance, authorities will cut red tape and minimize unnecessary work in the ports themselves, according to the document released in April. "These measures focus on supporting foreign trade with easier and better customs clearance services," said Huang Shengqiang, head of the General Administration of Customs' port management office. Charges for hoisting, moving and storing qualified cargo will be waived, and cargo examination procedures will be reviewed to ensure they cause minimal disturbance to businesses, the document said.

Sites to Merge

The 58.com, a Chinese online classifieds market, announced that it has acquired a strategic stake in one of its competitors, Ganji Inc. It has agreed to acquire a 43.2-percent fully diluted stake in Ganji, including 34 million in stock shares and $412.2 million in cash, according to the company's statement. Yang Haoyong, the founder of Ganji.com, will become one of the co-chief executives along with Yao Jinbo, founder of 58.com. The new combined group is expected to be valued at as much as $10 billion.

Service Consumption Rockets

Chinese service consumption is likely to grow much faster than commodity consumption this year, according to research by a Ministry of Commerce think tank. Growth in medical care and entertainment is expected to far outpace that of food and clothing in 2015, with rising demand for transportation and telecommunications. Services account for about 20 percent of Chinese consumer spending. Retail sales have always grown faster than total national consumption during the past three decades, said Zhao Ping, a senior researcher with the think tank.

Risk Evaluations

The Ministry of Finance said that the financial aspects of public-private partnerships (PPPs) will undergo a risk evaluation. In an announcement in April, the ministry said the evaluation would include the fiscal impact over several years and the distribution of projects across sectors. Annual fiscal expenditure on PPP projects will be less than 10 percent of the general public budget to control risks, the ministry said.

IPR Management Improving

China has improved its intellectual property rights (IPR) management and received the most patent applications in the world in 2014 for the fourth year running, said Shen Changyu, head of the State Intellectual Property Office. China received 2.36 million patent applications in 2014, including 928,000 invention patent applications, up 12.5 percent year on year. China had received a total of 16.1 million trademark applications by the end of March. It now takes less than nine months for a trademark to be approved, about one month less than 2013.

First Imported Commodities Expo

China's eastern city of Yiwu, the world's largest wholesale market for small consumer goods, will hold its first imported commodities expo this June. About 1,200 companies will attend the four-day expo. The expo will showcase 100,000 imported commodities produced mainly by countries and regions along the Belt and Road trade routes, and East Asia. Yiwu attracts 10 million domestic and 500,000 foreign buyers every year, and around 13,000 merchants have established permanent offices in the city. Foreign and domestic e-commerce companies also have purchasing centers there, aided by over 2,500 logistics companies for global distribution.