A livelihood project, and a key livelihood project at that, required 133 official seals within 8 months. The originally scheduled start date had long passed, yet 12 seals were still missing.

This happened in a city in Northeast China.

The person who revealed this was Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council. At the meeting on revitalizing Northeast China and other old industrial bases held on July 31, he used this case as an example to point out that government departments have serious red tape that binds enterprises.

Reform Stimulates Market Vitality

Against the backdrop of the State Council's requirement for governments at all levels to cancel and delegate "unnecessary powers," Li Keqiang told the principal officials of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia, "We must start with our own reforms to mobilize and stimulate market vitality."

Judging from GDP growth in the first half of the year, the Northeast region is clearly under greater pressure.

According to currently published data, Jilin Province's economic growth in the first half of the year was 6.8%, a decrease of two percentage points from the first quarter, ranking fourth from the bottom among provinces that have announced their first-half GDP growth. Liaoning's GDP growth in the first half was also not impressive, at 7.2%. Heilongjiang's data has not yet been released, but based on industrial value-added data from the first five months, industry insiders generally believe that Heilongjiang's GDP growth is "beyond further decline."

Therefore, in the national context, the economies of all three Northeast provinces are at the middle-to-lower level. According to a recent summary of the second-quarter economy by relevant departments in Liaoning Province, "the current economic growth rate continues to slow."

A recent enlarged meeting of the Heilongjiang Provincial Party Committee emphasized that the decline in economic growth should not be overemphasized, nor should the situation be viewed too pessimistically. Instead, it is important to see the inherent potential and new growth points of the economy, maintain calm and sufficient focus, and take effective measures to respond.

Fan Hengshan, Deputy Secretary-General of the National Development and Reform Commission, previously analyzed the Northeast's difficulties, stating that from the perspective of supply structure, local enterprises in the "raw" materials sector are experiencing difficulties, with prices of coal, crude oil, steel, and other raw material products declining.

As one of the earliest regions to implement a planned economy, "the Northeast has deep-seated institutional and structural contradictions and has encountered many special difficulties in the process of moving toward a market economy," Li Keqiang said.

Li Keqiang particularly pointed out that the Northeast region has unique geographical advantages and should fully utilize its coastal and border advantages to further expand opening up. It should lead the country in equipment manufacturing and agricultural modernization; accelerate the implementation of shantytown transformation and increase major infrastructure construction that benefits both the present and the long term.

He encouraged the Northeast region to "dare to pioneer and experiment" with certain major reform measures.

"The revitalization of the Northeast ultimately depends on the Northeast itself, on innovation and entrepreneurship," Li Keqiang said. "We must rely on reform to stimulate the enthusiasm of hundreds of millions of people in the Northeast and unleash huge market potential and social vitality. We must create a fair competitive market environment and turn the Northeast into a new hotbed for innovation and entrepreneurship."

Policies Support Northeast Revival

Looking back at history, Li Keqiang was moved. He said that at the beginning of the construction of New China's industrial system, the Northeast supported the whole country, and the working class of that time paid a huge price.

At yesterday's meeting, he used data on Liaoning's special contributions to the whole country from the "First Five-Year Plan" to before the reform and opening up to illustrate the historical role of the Northeast region. "This is the contribution of the working class tightening their belts for the country."

Li Keqiang said, "Our support for revitalizing Northeast China and other old industrial bases and helping them overcome certain special difficulties is, in a sense, repaying 'historical debts.'"

He cited what he saw when he was in charge of Liaoning as an example: in the bitter cold winter, some old miners lived in houses built with wooden boards filled with loess, known as "dry-laid walls," and some even in simple "laborer houses" built before liberation.

"If we don't address these debts and allow cities to have high-rise buildings on one side and contiguous shantytowns on the other, we would truly be failing these old workers," Li Keqiang said. "We must be responsible and have a conscience."

Regarding the current difficult situation in the Northeast, Li Keqiang prescribed some "remedies." These include advancing streamlined administration and decentralization to stimulate market vitality, providing a fair market environment for business operations and innovation and entrepreneurship, promoting the accelerated development of small and micro enterprises and the private economy, and piloting the establishment of private banks.

A reporter recently interviewed in Jilin found that some enterprises are eager to apply for private banks. Zhang Ziyi, Chairman of Jilin Province Cultural Industry Investment Holding (Group) Co., Ltd., told reporters that they are planning to apply to establish a private bank.

In addition to the above policy support, the State Council also explicitly requires strengthening major infrastructure construction in the Northeast region, such as transportation, water conservancy, and railway renovation, and accelerating the transformation of shantytowns, old urban industrial areas, and independent industrial and mining areas.