The city of Jinhua introduced 136,600 new market entities over the first half of this year, more than any other city in Zhejiang province.

Roughly one third of these new market entities were companies, while the rest were individual businesses. The number of newly established foreign trade firms stood at 11,200 in H1, 2.3 times higher than the same period last year.

Liu Kai led a group of workers in the assembly of production lines at the workshop of Jinhua Hongchuang Plastic Products Co Ltd on July 23. The company, which was established by Liu less than one month ago and will start production in early August, had already received a dozen orders at the time.

Liu said that he decided to locate his startup in Jinhua because it is located near the Yiwu international wholesale market, giving it a lot of business potential.

Jinhua has been improving its administrative services and business environment for startups throughout the year. Opening a business has become much easier: materials needed to register a business can now be uploaded to an online system and be reviewed by administration staff immediately. The applicant can obtain business licenses at 57 bank outlets and all county-level administrative service centers around the city, or acquire an e-license through a mini program embedded in the WeChat messaging app for mobile phones. It now takes a business owner less than one week to receive the license.