Zhoushan will strive to reduce the amount of time required to file for foreign investment to less than one day, in order to help foreign companies save on costs, local authorities recently announced.

The city has been working tirelessly to improve the business climate for foreign companies in recent years, as evidenced by a policy released by the local government in October 2016 that broadened market access and shortened the negative list for these companies.

The negative list includes industries and fields in which foreign companies are not allowed to invest. 

"Three years ago, foreign companies had to obtain the approval of local commerce departments when registering in China and had to submit overwhelming amounts of paperwork," said Yu Yong, who works at the department of commerce in Zhoushan.

The new policy implements a filing system instead of an approval system for foreign investment not on the negative list, allowing most foreign companies to obtain a business license before filing a record with the commerce departments, Yu added.

To further simplify registration procedures for foreign companies, Zhoushan issued another policy last March, combining the registration and filing procedures.

"Companies can complete both registration and filing procedures at the same window and only need to submit materials one time," said Huang Wenjie, who works at the market supervision and administration department of Zhoushan.

"All procedures can be completed online, companies just need to fill in the correct information on the specific websites," said a representative of a Sino-foreign joint venture in Zhoushan, adding that they were able to complete the process within half an hour.

Through consistent efforts, Zhoushan managed to cut the registration approval time for foreign companies on the negative list to less than 10 working days by the end of June, and the filing time for those not on the list to less than two working days.

"The provincial target was to reduce the amount of time required to less than 13 working days for companies on the negative list and two working days for companies not on the list by the end of this year. We hit that target half a year early," said Yu.

"We aim to further reduce the time to five working days and one working day by the end of the year," Yu added.

Statistics show that Zhoushan currently houses 622 foreign-funded companies, 29 of which were established in the first half of this year, with a contractual foreign investment of $1.06 billion.