In recent years, Baotou has accelerated the transformation of government functions and made every effort to create a comprehensive and deep-level first-class business environment, according to local media reports.

The handling of 551 government service items at the municipal level continued to be streamlined, with a 20 percent reduction of application materials, a 24 percent reduction of processing links, and a 54 percent reduction of processing time. A total of 208 items are ready to be upgraded immediately.

A cooperation agreement was signed by Baotou and Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Yinchuan in Ningxia Hui autonomous region and Yulin in Shaanxi province.

According to the agreement, the four cities will use the national and provincial (autonomous region) integrated online government service platforms to set up "cross-provincial administration" windows in each of their municipal affairs halls to carry out off-site acceptance and processing.

For matters that have been fully digitized, "full-process online management" will be carried out, and those that have not been fully digitized will be handled through remote video consultation and an offline collection of materials and results.

Baotou has announced 66 "trans-provincial affairs" closely related to the production and enterprises and quality of life of citizens. They include social security, medical care, education, provident funds, pensions, real estate, and market entity registration.

Baotou has strengthened the application process, and the protection and use of intellectual property rights as well as reduced the processing time of patent administrative adjudication cases from 90 working days to 60 working days. Also, the city has set up a trademark business acceptance window at the State Intellectual Property Office.