BEIJING, April 16, 2026 — China’s State Council has unveiled a revised set of policy guidelines to advance systemic reform of the country’s investment approval mechanism, with the core goals of cutting bureaucratic red tape, elevating approval service efficiency, and unlocking larger volumes of high-quality effective investment across the country.
Released publicly on Wednesday by the General Office of the State Council, the new framework lays out targeted adjustments for the two major categories of investment projects in China: government-backed and privately led initiatives. For projects funded through public resources, the guidelines commit to further clarifying and optimizing the distribution of approval authority across different levels of government, alongside the introduction of a lifelong accountability system for project decision-making. This measure is designed to enforce greater responsibility among official decision-makers and reduce misallocation of public investment funds.
For projects driven by private and enterprise investment, the policy requires continuous dynamic updates to the official government approval catalog, standardized documentation for project registration, and stronger alignment between national investment policies, industrial development strategies, and production factor management frameworks. The coordinated policy design aims to reduce policy friction and give enterprises greater clarity when planning new investment initiatives.
To tackle longstanding complaints about slow and fragmented approval processes, the guidelines outline concrete steps to streamline administrative workflows for all investment projects, standardize regulatory oversight of public project bidding and tendering, crack down on prevalent irregularities such as bid-rigging and collusive bidding, and upgrade digital systems for project information filing. These changes are expected to cut the overall timeline for project launch and reduce compliance costs for investors.
In closing, the policy document emphasizes that relevant regulatory departments will have their oversight responsibilities strengthened, and a new performance evaluation system aligned with China’s national goal of high-quality development will be established to assess the outcomes of the reform and investment implementation.