"Please put on a bigger piece of clothing for a fast-growing child," Xi Jinping used the metaphor to initiate a reform in Zhejiang province nearly 20 years ago.
Yiwu, now a famous production hub for small commodities and a growing global trade hub in East China's Zhejiang province, faced growth problems in the early 2000s as it led the country in pioneering opening-up.
Embracing unprecedented development opportunities, Yiwu's administration capabilities as a county-level city lagged behind the pace of its economic and social development. From 2002 to 2007, Xi Jinping, the then secretary of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee, made over 10 fact-finding trips to Yiwu to remove the existing shackles through reforms.
The "diagnosis" to address this situation in the city is just like "a fast-growing child wearing unsuitable clothes", Xi said, using the metaphor. Xi gave instructions in November 2005 to remove institutional bottlenecks holding its private economy back from fast growth, with the bottlenecks varying from finance, registration for enterprises engaged in foreign trade to tax policies.
A year later, the Zhejiang provincial government issued guidelines on piloting local government administration reforms, enabling Yiwu, under the administration of Jinhua, to enjoy a total of 131 authorized items in economic and social management delegated to the county-level government, the first in the country.
After changing into "bigger clothes", Yiwu registered faster growth. Its GDP rose from 30.01 billion yuan in 2005 to 42.09 billion yuan in 2007, registering an annual 15 percent growth.
The reforms never halted and kept deepening.
Today, the outcomes brought by reforms in various public service areas and in various localities of China are a witness to Xi's vision and determination to progress through deepening reforms amid changing conditions, bringing benefits to both market entities and the general public with viable solutions.
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