"Accelerating the construction of a unified national market" has become one of the tasks listed in the 2024 work report.
The report proposes to formulate a unified national market construction standard guidelines, and proposes to unify the system and rules.
1. Measures should be taken in such areas as the pilot of comprehensive reform of the market-oriented allocation of factors, the introduction of regulatory rules, and the maintenance of market order of fair competition.
2024 is a crucial year for the 14th Five-Year Plan. How to build a unified national market?
The national unified market ushered in a signal of speed-up.
In April 2022, the "Opinions of the Communist Party of China on Accelerating the Construction of a National Unified Market" was issued, which clearly accelerated the establishment of a unified national market system and rules, broke down local protection and market segmentation, broke through the key blocking points that restrict the economic cycle, promoted the smooth flow of commodity factor resources in a wider range, and accelerated the construction of an efficient, standardized, fair competition, and fully open national unified market.
What are the characteristics of this market? The "Opinions" put forward the "five unifications" and "one elimination", that is, through a unified basic system and rules, a unified and connected market facilities, a unified factor resource market, a unified commodity and service market, a unified market supervision and the elimination of local protection, to build an efficient, standardized, fair competition, fully open super-large-scale market.
Looking back on the work related to the construction of a unified national market in the past year, the 2024 ** work report mentions that the overall work plan for the construction of a unified national market has been introduced in the past year, and a number of policies and regulations that hinder fair competition have been cleaned up.
The construction of a unified national market has ushered in a signal of speed.
On December 26, 2023, the State Council Information Office held a regular policy briefing on the progress of accelerating the construction of a unified national market. Li Chunlin, deputy director of the state, said at the press conference that he would study and formulate guidelines for the construction of a unified national market, accelerate the introduction of the "Social Credit Construction Law" and "Regulations on the Review of Fair Competition", optimize the standard supply structure, strengthen the management of standard formulation, and further improve the unified market basic system rules.
* The work report proposes to speed up the construction of a unified national market, which is based on the smooth domestic cycle and the benign development of domestic and international dual circulation, so as to realize the smooth flow of goods, goods and markets, resources, people, and technology. The vice president of the Institute of Management of Beijing Normal University told the Shell Financial Reporter that there is an imbalance in the development of various parts of China, and for a long time, the problem of market segmentation in different regions continues to exist, which not only restricts the national flow and application of production factors, but also leads to the continuous solidification of the imbalance between regions to a certain extent, so that the gap between the east and the west is getting bigger and bigger. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to establish a unified national market to eliminate circulation barriers, integrate development barriers, and break the bottleneck of co-construction and sharing, so as to promote the common prosperity of the whole people.
Unified allocation of resources to achieve optimal results.
A number of interviewees told the Shell financial reporter that the establishment of a unified national market is an inevitable trend, but it is not achieved overnight.
Building a unified national electricity market is the trend of the times, but there are also bound to be many challenges, and we must fully estimate the difficulties. Wang Yongli, deputy director of the Energy Internet Research Center of North China Electric Power University, told the Shell Financial Reporter. In his view, green and low-carbon development is a problem of productivity, while the national unified market is a problem of production relations, and the two are integrated to form a closed loop.
Wang Yongli said that to build a unified national electricity market, it is necessary to first straighten out the relationship between different levels such as the provincial market, the inter-provincial market, and the surrounding market. The rules, market conditions, and market groups of each provincial market are very different, and the degree of marketization of electricity trading is also inconsistent. For example, Shandong Electric Power has a strong self-supply capacity, and at the same time, as a major province with installed power capacity, it has initially built a market system of medium and long-term + spot + auxiliary services + retail; Although Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province are both receiving markets, Jiangsu has a strong power generation capacity and a large load. Although the installed capacity of electricity in some provinces is small, the market-oriented exploration is relatively mature, for example, Gansu is currently the only spot market in the country where the user side reports the amount of the first part.
Wang Yongli believes that based on the provincial market, the existing loopholes and problems will be solved will be the first step, after clarifying the provincial market, it is possible to carry out the connection of the inter-provincial market, and then establish a unified national market.
** Feng Qiaobin, deputy director of the Macroeconomic Research Department of the Development Research Center, said at a press conference in December last year that for a long period of time since the reform and opening up, China's main orientation in economic development is to delegate power to localities, enterprises and individuals in order to activate the enthusiasm and creativity of various subjects. However, at the same time, it has also formed a unique phenomenon of "administrative region economy", forming a certain degree of local protection and regional market separation, hindering the free flow of factors and the equal development of various enterprises. At present, efforts should be made to remove the remnants of the "administrative region economy," break down local protection, break down regional separation, and remove the key obstacles to building a unified national market from the bottom.
How to rebuild the binding relationship between the market economy and the local government under the premise of establishing a unified national market will be one of the core challenges. Lan Hong, deputy director of the Ecological Finance Research Center of Chinese University, told Shell Financial Reporter.
Lanhong believes that only by establishing a unified national market can resources be allocated in a unified manner to achieve the best results. But at the same time, we should pay attention to the fact that we are currently in a critical period of high development of new energy, and the development of new energy must rely on the support of a variety of resources. In China's administrative system, the implementation of vertical management of sub-departments, the implementation of horizontal management of localities, and the establishment of a unified national market, first of all, we must carry out institutional reform, to prevent the impact of local integration of resources to promote the development of new energy enthusiasm.
Lanhong gave an example of the pilot work of green finance. According to her, the approach adopted by the green finance pilot is to sign a task with the local government, and then concentrate the strength of various local departments to practice. This approach effectively acknowledges that there are differences in resource endowments in different regions. The establishment of a unified national market also needs to take this into account, the traditional energy endowment and the development of new energy resources and conditions in each region are different, reflecting the characteristics of the power market.
This year's work report actually puts forward a new research content for the development of the energy sector, that is, how to achieve a unified national market. Lan Hong said that in the establishment of a unified national market, optimize the allocation of resources, while retaining the local integration of resources to promote enthusiasm and participation, which requires a certain mechanism and system reform.
Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Energy Policy Research Institute of the School of Management of Xiamen University, told the Shell Financial Reporter that the construction of a national electricity market has been proposed before, but the progress is not very obvious, indicating that there are still many obstacles. **Although the work report points out the direction as a programmatic document, it still needs more detailed, more specific and stronger support in practice.
In Song Xiangqing's view, to build a national unified market, it is first necessary to compile a national unified market development plan, formulate standards for the construction of a national unified market, and issue implementation steps for a national unified market. Second, it is necessary to aim at the key links and problems in the establishment of a large national unified market, and strive to break the institutional shackles of the establishment of a large national unified market, especially to promote the unification of systems and rules in the areas of property rights protection, market access, fair competition, and social credit. Third, it is necessary to deepen the reform of the market-oriented allocation of factors, improve the market supervision rules in key areas, emerging fields, and foreign-related fields, and earnestly break down local protectionism, put an end to market segmentation, and highlight outstanding problems such as black-box operations and unfair competition in attracting investment and talents.
Beijing News Shell Financial Reporter Zhu Yueyi.
Edited by Xu Chao.
Proofreading by Liu Baoqing.