The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed the construction of a unified national market and the improvement of the basic institutions of the market economy. Accelerating the construction of a unified national market is an inherent requirement for improving the socialist market economic system and a strong support for building a new development pattern. From the perspective of the law of economic development, a unified national market is a typical characteristic of a large economy. As the world's second-largest economy and the second-largest consumer market, China has a large market scale, strong industrial resilience, the most complete industrial system globally, and continuously strengthening scientific and technological innovation capabilities. These are the prerequisites and foundations for China's consistent advantage of abundant market supply. Accelerating the construction of a unified national market can better play the role of market regulation, the role of market mechanisms in resource allocation through survival of the fittest, guide investment and industrial flows, promote adjustments in output structures of production industries and related enterprises, promote product and industrial upgrading, and form a vibrant market competition pattern, thereby providing strong support for high-quality economic development.

The key to building a unified national market lies in improving the market system and perfecting market mechanisms. The market system should be structurally complete, reasonably proportioned, and fully functional. Commodity markets and factor markets, tangible and intangible markets, domestic and international markets, spot and futures markets, and other types of markets all have specific roles and functions, coexist and complement each other, and together constitute the market system, providing support for the smooth circulation of the national economy. The effective operation of market mechanisms requires the full play of price mechanisms, competition mechanisms, supply and demand mechanisms, risk mechanisms, etc., and the establishment and improvement of laws, regulations, and institutional systems are needed. In terms of improving the market system, it is necessary to cultivate a large number of vibrant business entities, reduce unnecessary approvals, unshackle enterprises, reduce the burden on enterprises, stimulate market vitality, and create a good environment for innovation and entrepreneurship; at the same time, it is necessary to continuously improve consumer income levels, enable more people to have the ability to consume, innovate products and services, and stimulate new consumer demand. In terms of improving market mechanisms, the focus is on deepening the market-oriented reform of factors, based on forming a reasonable factor price mechanism, further optimizing the basic institutions of the market economy such as property rights protection, market access, fair competition, and social credit, and standardizing economic activities with unified market rules. Specifically, the following aspects can be improved.

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Accelerate the construction of a high-standard market system. Eliminate local protection and market segmentation, establish power lists and negative lists, delegate administrative approval rights, and fully implement the fair competition review system. Strengthen the construction of standard systems in the circulation field, promote the unification of various standards at different levels, and promote effective connection between standards. Accelerate the formulation and implementation of standards in key areas such as intelligent logistics, e-commerce, and agricultural product circulation. Improve the supervision and evaluation mechanisms for the implementation of standards, strengthen the application of standards in administrative management such as certification, testing, market access, and law enforcement supervision, and gradually form a unified national standard system. Promote the sharing of multimodal transport information, strengthen the connection between standards and rules of different modes of transport, promote integrated operation and networked collaboration across departments, regions, organizations, and modes, reduce the conversion costs of multimodal transport subjects, and accelerate the implementation of multimodal transport "one-way" and "one-box" models, and innovate the standards and specifications for bill mutual recognition.

Create a more fair and dynamic market environment. Regulate improper market competition and market intervention behaviors, strengthen anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition, resolutely eliminate market access barriers, and regulate the scope of monopolistic and competitive businesses of natural monopoly enterprises. Improve market access and exit mechanisms, for medium and high-end industrial product manufacturing enterprises with large market potential, high added value, and high technical requirements, reduce market access thresholds, provide opportunities and conditions for transformation and upgrading, for enterprises that have been losing money for a long time and cannot turn losses into profits, guide them to exit the market through market-oriented means, and optimize industrial structure. Regulate local investment promotion regulations and systems, improve bidding system rules, avoid low-level repetitive construction and excessive homogenized competition, promptly clean up policies that hinder a unified market and fair competition such as local protection, market segmentation, and designated transactions, clarify that local governments must not set obstacles for enterprises to operate or migrate across regions, and must not set unreasonable and discriminatory access and exit conditions to restrict the free flow of goods, services, and factor resources.

Promote the interconnection of infrastructure and improve the layout of urban and rural circulation systems. Break the geographical constraints, comprehensively consider factors such as differences in regional economic development levels, geographical environment differences, and differences in the degree of technology application, and gradually promote seamless connection of circulation networks in various regions in terms of balanced layout of circulation network facilities, distribution of circulation network nodes, urban circulation function positioning, complementary urban and rural circulation facilities, and cross-regional and cross-departmental coordinated governance. Strengthen the effective connection between the planning of circulation system construction and related planning such as urban and rural planning, land planning, and transportation planning, integrate resources, and focus on supervising the co-construction and sharing of circulation facilities in different regions, the docking of circulation systems, and the sharing of circulation information. Reasonably plan the construction of transportation and information networks in rural and western regions, enhance the coordination ability of circulation systems between different regions, strengthen functional zoning, gradually eliminate the differences in urban and rural circulation levels, optimize the layout of the national large circulation network, and improve the operation quality and efficiency of the circulation system.

Empower the construction of a unified national market with the development of the digital economy. Integrate fragmented or discrete information within the market to achieve instant sharing on digital platforms, eliminate the spatial and geographical restrictions of goods, services, and information transmission, and use the information connectivity function of digital technology to improve the efficiency of supply and demand matching, and reduce the information search costs, bargaining costs, and decision-making costs in the transaction process. Establish and improve laws and regulations related to data element transactions, strengthen market supervision of the digital economy, improve the construction of the data element market system, explore efficient pricing mechanisms for data elements, clarify data ownership, continuously improve the level of data transactions, and enhance the security protection capacity of the data element market. Focus on promoting the construction of digital infrastructure, optimize the layout of digital infrastructure, bridge the "digital divide" between regions and between urban and rural areas, eliminate urban and rural, and regional market barriers, meet the technical and infrastructure needs for the explosive growth of data under the background of digital economic development, and provide a solid material and technical foundation for the establishment of a unified national market.

The unified national market we want to build is not only large in scale and high in quality but also efficient, standardized, fair in competition, and fully open. The construction of a unified national market will surely promote the steady improvement of market efficiency, the continuous optimization of the market environment, and the upgrading of market structure, and better promote high-quality economic development.