Northwest China's Gansu province, which seeks to provide an optimized business environment, will step up efforts to integrate its resources with the development of national strategic emerging industries, in order to accelerate high-quality development, said Hu Changsheng, Party secretary of the province.

Hu, who is also director of the Standing Committee of the Gansu Provincial People's Congress and a deputy to the 14th National People's Congress, said the quality of the business environment is key to determining whether development opportunities can be transformed into development advantages.

According to Hu, since last year, the province has made the construction of an optimized business environment a "lifeline" project for high-quality development, by attracting investment and continuously demonstrating the openness of its business environment.

Last year, the province implemented a total of 4,452 investment projects that it had attracted from outside Gansu, welcomed investment from 99 Fortune 500 enterprises, and received 596.1 billion yuan ($82.8 billion) in funds, a year-on-year increase of 41.78 percent.

"Thanks to the significant improvement in its business environment, Gansu is now becoming a'blue ocean' for investment and a 'hot land' for entrepreneurship," Hu said.

Based on eight major fields, including upgrading and transformation, scientific innovation and digitalization, the province has launched a series of policies to standardize political and business communication, optimize the government's service quality, and boost confidence in private investment.

Meanwhile, Gansu has also enhanced the role of major State-owned enterprises in building a first-class business environment.

"Since last year, we have solidly carried out actions to deepen and enhance the reform of SOEs, with a focus on enhancing core competitiveness and core functions. We have revitalized and integrated State-owned capital assets, increased investment in strategic emerging industries, cutting-edge industries and future industries, and created more dynamic, efficient and competitive modern first-class enterprises," Hu said.

Data from the government showed that the total assets and net profits of provincial enterprises increased by 5.6 percent and 10.9 percent year-on-year, respectively, in 2023.

"We are also building a better business environment to create a higher-quality life for the people. Over the past year, through continuous optimization of our business environment, more enterprises have grown in Gansu, more talented people have started businesses in the province, and more people have achieved employment and income growth in their hometowns," said Hu.

Last year, the number of newly established business entities in the province increased by 18.3 percent year-on-year, and 320,000 new urban jobs were created.

The per capita disposable income of the province's residents increased by 7.5 percent yearly, ranking second in the country in terms of growth rate.

Tang Dajie, a guest researcher at Wuhan University, said: "Optimizing the business environment is an important way of enhancing economic competitiveness. Only by leveraging advantages in regional competition, especially in international competition, can we stand firm in this era of globalization."