The rule of law business environment is an essential infrastructure of a modern economic system, and it is a key support point for stimulating market vitality, stabilizing social expectations, and enhancing international competitiveness. As the window of China's reform and opening up and the engine of economic development, Shanghai has introduced action plans for eight consecutive years to continuously create a world-class business environment. This year, it has even formed 58 reform tasks that directly address the pain points of enterprises. From institutional innovation to improving judicial efficiency, from optimizing enterprise services to connecting with international rules, Shanghai's rule of law practices have not only provided a model for the whole country but also explored the \Shanghai solution\ in frontier areas such as the digital economy and cross-border trade.

The World Bank recently released survey data on Chinese enterprises and the \China Enterprise Survey Overview Report 2025\ show that the overall performance of Chinese enterprise surveys is relatively good. Among the 59 evaluation points related to the business environment, Shanghai has achieved the best global level in 22 items. Luo Peixin, a member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of East China University of Political Science and Law, and Dean of the China Rule of Law Business Environment Research Institute, believes that this fully demonstrates that Shanghai has made significant achievements in benchmarking international standards, optimizing institutional rules, improving the quality of government services, and enhancing the efficiency of enterprise affairs. Behind this achievement is the reform courage of Shanghai's government departments at all levels, the systematic reshaping of the rule of law thinking, and the deep integration of digital technology with urban governance.

\Shanghai places great emphasis on continuously creating a first-class business environment, and we regard a good business environment as a shining card of Shanghai,\ said Gong Zheng, Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and Mayor of Shanghai.

What are the new developments, new measures, and new thoughts in Shanghai's continuous construction of a rule-of-law business environment?

着力营造法治化营商环境，需运用法治力量稳预期、强信心、促发展。在方面，上海交出了高分“答卷”。

In February this year, Shanghai held a conference on optimizing the business environment and released the \Shanghai Action Plan Focusing on Enhancing Enterprise Perception and Continuously Creating a World-Class Business Environment.\ This marks the eighth consecutive year that Shanghai has sounded the call to optimize the business environment. The \Action Plan\ covers five major aspects and 58 specific tasks and measures, including deepening World Bank benchmarking reforms, optimizing overall enterprise services, optimizing enterprise-related regulatory inspections, consolidating the grassroots foundation of the business environment, and fostering a positive social atmosphere, to continuously improve legal protection. Various departments in Shanghai have quickly taken action and made multifaceted efforts to create a solid \legal firewall.\

The Shanghai High People's Court has introduced 15 measures in 6 aspects, which are detailed and broken down into 50 specific tasks. For example, in terms of improving the quality and efficiency of trial and execution, focusing on key links and key areas, an International Commercial Expert Committee and a mechanism for jurisdiction clauses in foreign-related commercial disputes have been established in the Shanghai International Commercial Court. In terms of deepening the reform of bankruptcy operation, with the assistance of data in handling cases and the linkage between government and courts as the starting point, support is provided for the operation of the coordination mechanism for bankruptcy administrative affairs, and support is given to establish and improve a market-oriented out-of-court reorganization mechanism, etc. \The 8.0 plan is another important measure for the work of the Shanghai courts in advancing the rule of law in the business environment,\ said Lin Xiaonie, a member of the Party Group and Vice President of the Shanghai High People's Court.

Shanghai's procuratorial organs have clarified 17 specific tasks with 59 items in 4 aspects: protection of the rights and interests of business entities, legal protection of market order, creation of a business environment atmosphere, and empowerment and upgrading of prosecutorial functions. In Changning District, where internet companies are \clustered,\ the Changning District Procuratorate will legally crack down on crimes such as online extortion and blackmail of enterprises, damage to business reputation, and picking quarrels and provoking trouble, which are \keystroke business injuries,\ and build a collaborative governance mechanism for internet public welfare infringements. The Jinshan District Procuratorate and the Jinshan District Market Supervision Bureau jointly issued the \Legal Service Manual for the Entire Lifecycle of Business Entities (Version 1.0),\ covering areas such as network live broadcasting industry standards, tax internal control upgrades, commercial secret protection, and international trade standard operations. The Songjiang District People's Procuratorate has formed a case handling model of \1+1+3+N,\ with the head of the business department being the general responsible person, the chief prosecutor as the coordinator, 3 prosecutors assisting several backbone case handlers, and professional \external brains\ from units such as Songjiang University Town experts and scholars, and the Market Supervision Bureau, to strive to create a new situation in work.

Building a sound legal business environment, resolving disputes is a crucial part. Liu Yanhao, the deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Justice, stated that the flexible advantages of commercial mediation procedures will be leveraged, taking the principle of benefiting enterprises as the guiding principle, to provide convenient commercial dispute resolution services for businesses. At the same time, the supply of arbitration system rules will be increased, and efforts will be made to expand the scope of application of foreign-related maritime temporary arbitration. Shanghai took the lead in the country to promote the establishment of a multi-level, full-chain temporary arbitration system rule system. Based on the \Shanghai Foreign-related Commercial Maritime Temporary Arbitration Promotion Measures (Trial)\ issued last year, this year has further expanded the scope of application of foreign-related maritime arbitration, further enhancing Shanghai's attractiveness as an arbitration location. Two enterprises registered in Shanghai, in order to resolve disputes in the performance of international shipping crew management service contracts as soon as possible, followed the international maritime dispute resolution customs, and in accordance with the relevant temporary arbitration regulations formulated and implemented by Shanghai, jointly agreed to arbitration in Shanghai. This case is the first foreign-related maritime temporary arbitration case in the country, from the parties reaching an arbitration agreement to making a ruling, the dispute was resolved economically and efficiently in about two weeks.

Mediation has also become an indispensable part of Shanghai's construction of a rule-of-law business environment. \Mediation is a grassroots democratic legal system with Chinese characteristics, praised by the international community as the 'Eastern Experience',\ said Sun Ye, President of the Shanghai People's Mediation Association and Director of the Pudong New Area Property Management Dispute People's Mediation Committee. In terms of mediation, Shanghai has a comprehensive layout from the government to the streets, continuously improving the level of a rule-of-law business environment.

On April 18th, the Ministry of Justice issued a business mediation organization registration certificate to the Shanghai Oriental International Commercial Mediation Institute, which is the first business mediation organization registered by the judicial administrative department with a code nationwide. Sheng Yongqiang, the chairman of the Shanghai Oriental International Commercial Mediation Institute, stated that the institute achieves professional operation through a \decision-making layer + executive layer + supervision layer\ three-in-one governance system, and has a strategic guidance committee and a professional working committee, concentrating experts from various fields to provide decision-making basis for strategic development and professional guidance for individual mediation cases.

The Xuhui District Government and the District Court have established a \judge-guided mediation\ apprenticeship mechanism, which provides specific guidance in legal relationship identification and risk prevention and resolution of conflicts by timely tracking the mediation process, and conducts legality review and timely judicial confirmation of the reached mediation agreements. The Huangpu District has established the \Pujiang Harmony\ commercial mediation alliance, building a diversified dispute resolution mechanism that includes rapid connection and handling of commercial disputes, \mediation + judicial confirmation,\ and \notarization with enforcement power.\

Front-line services enhance governance warmth.

Good laws also require good governance. Zhang Lei, the Executive Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, stated that efforts should be made to serve businesses and protect enterprises, to achieve tangible results in warming up and benefiting businesses, to increase the multifaceted resolution of business-related disputes, and to promote the formation of a strong joint force from the whole society to care for, participate in, and safeguard a rule-of-law business environment.

\Wherever the frontier of technological innovation is, judicial service and protection measures will follow and be implemented there.\ Chen Zilong, a full-time member of the Procuratorial Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate, stated that the Shanghai procuratorial organs fully utilize the comprehensive service functions of the park, and took the lead in establishing the \Deputy Director of Rule of Law\ mechanism in science and innovation parks nationwide in 2024, striving to provide zero-distance service to frontline innovative entities.

The so-called \Deputy Principal of Rule of Law\ refers to prosecutors taking the initiative to enter science and innovation parks, providing close-up services to enterprises within their jurisdiction, and offering legal protection for the healthy development of businesses. Prosecutorial authorities across Shanghai have signed cooperation agreements with 28 national and municipal pilot industries and key industrial clusters in science and innovation parks, providing regular legal services. The \Deputy Principal of Rule of Law\ carries out daily duties by effectively implementing rights protection for enterprises, collecting and analyzing clues, and conducting discussions and training lectures, providing prosecutorial services more than 160 times, from which a number of cases involving the infringement of intellectual property rights of international well-known brands and local old brands have been discovered and handled. In March of this year, as the \Deputy Principal of Rule of Law,\ Zhu Qinghua, the Party Secretary and Chief Prosecutor of the Xuhui District Procuratorate, led a team into Shanghai's \Mousu Space\ large model innovation ecological community, engaging in close dialogue with enterprises and solving difficult problems for them.

Enterprise protection measures \do addition\ to continuously increase the temperature of governance. Since last April, 17 \Blue Whale\ enterprise protection stations in Shanghai have been established one after another. Over the past year, they have helped the police to discover and solve more than 1900 economic crimes that infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises, disrupt the production and business order of enterprises, and damage the business environment, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of more than 200 brands. Among them, Baoshan District has established a \Blue Whale\ enterprise protection station in the Shanghai Robotics Industrial Park, establishing a complete set of work mechanisms, and setting up a dedicated liaison officer, serving as a \sensor\ for discovering legal risks involving enterprises, a \stethoscope\ for legal issues in enterprise operations, and breaking through the \last mile\ of prosecutorial enterprise protection. The \Blue Whale\ enterprise protection station in Putuo District has held several service meetings for enterprises, actively visited enterprise parks and industry associations for more than 20 research visits, and sent out more than 200 early warning prompts.

Protecting enterprise measures must not only do \addition\ but also \subtraction\. \This year, we focus on the enterprise's sense of feeling, and take hard measures to optimize administrative inspections, striving to make enterprises feel and feel good,\ Liu Yanhao introduced. The Shanghai Municipal Justice Bureau will carry out \risk + credit\ graded classification inspections, reasonably reducing the frequency of inspections for enterprises with low risk and high credit, and trying to do nothing without disturbance; for enterprises with high risk and low credit, pay close attention and improve the accuracy of inspections. At the same time, non-site inspections will be vigorously applied. For inspections that can be carried out remotely through video monitoring, automatic patrol, etc., and no illegal acts are found, on-site inspections will no longer be conducted in principle.

In response to the issues of repetitive, frequent, and multi-departmental administrative inspections of enterprises, Shanghai has fully implemented the \inspection code\. \To carry out administrative inspections involving enterprises, an inspection plan must be created through the law enforcement case handling system. After the inspection plan is generated, an inspection code can be applied for. The inspection code, once pushed, allows enterprises to quickly understand what kind of inspection will be conducted. During the implementation process, law enforcement officers must show the code to enter the enterprise.\ Yu Xiaoqiong, Director of the Law Enforcement Supervision Department of the Shanghai Municipal Justice Bureau, introduced.

The fine work style of the staff has added a touch of \brightness\ to Shanghai. \Handling every case requires focusing on the details to accurately diagnose, while also standing from an overall perspective and focusing on taking the initiative,\ said Wu Jing, Director of the Financial and Intellectual Property Prosecution Department and Director of the Intellectual Property Prosecution Office of the People's Procuratorate of Jing'an District, Shanghai. In a \zero confession\ non-state staff bribery case in the banking field handled last year, Wu Jing seized every detail of the case, from a small coffee purchase record to the complicated and tedious fund flows between the involved personnel. By guiding the investigation and conducting supplementary investigations, a large amount of indirect evidence was collected to construct a rigorous evidence accusation system. The PPT provided to the court in the end was over a hundred pages long.

Focus on key areas to intensify reform efforts.

No complicated steps are needed; just log in to the mobile platform and perform simple operations to obtain an effective certificate with an official seal, saving both time and effort. This has become a reality on the Shanghai Court's \Anhutong\ platform. Quan Liangyu, a lawyer from AnJieShiZe Law Firm, said, \It's really convenient, I have to give a big thumbs up.\

In civil and commercial cases, after the first-instance judgment takes effect, lawyers need to rely on the proof of effectiveness to help the parties apply for execution or handle property rights change registration. In the past, the proof of effectiveness was generally handled offline, which often took several days. The Shanghai High Court has vigorously promoted the construction of a \digital court\ and launched the \An Huxiong\ platform at the end of last year, developing functions such as \self-service generation of case effectiveness proof\ to empower judicial services for the people through digital reform, making the issue of issuing effectiveness proof easily resolved. Ye Qi, the deputy presiding judge of the case filing court of the Shanghai High Court, said that \An Huxiong\ is a personalized service system created by Shanghai courts with cases as the core for lawyers, people's assessors, mediators, and bankruptcy administrators and other diverse entities, which not only realizes the digitalization and intelligence of the litigation process but also has achieved significant results in judicial practice.

In addition, the development of over 400 intelligent auxiliary scenarios such as \financial loan contract disputes\ has improved the efficiency of similar case trials; the continuous upgrade of the Shanghai Court's one-stop dispute resolution platform for international commercial affairs provides a more diverse and efficient way for Chinese and foreign parties to resolve commercial disputes; participation in the establishment of the \verification of one thing\ platform for bankruptcy information has achieved the \one-stop inquiry\ of case information related to bankrupt enterprises... Various digital platforms have made resources \run\, and the governance of digital intelligence has helped the business environment to be \excellent\ without end.

Shanghai continues to focus on key and difficult issues, and constantly strives to reform and tackle challenges. In terms of foreign-related rule of law, the Shanghai Municipal Justice Bureau continues to seek ways to break the deadlock. First, it focuses on supervising the implementation of the goals and tasks of foreign-related rule of law construction in the \Shanghai Rule of Law Construction Plan (2021-2025)\ and the \New Era Shanghai Rule of Law Talent Training Plan (2021-2025)\. Second, it conducts training sessions for the heads of foreign-related rule of law in relevant municipal departments, the directors of the district rule of law committees, and the main heads of the district justice bureaus. Third, it earnestly organizes and implements research on the construction of foreign-related rule of law talent training bases in Shanghai universities, promotes the summary and evaluation of foreign-related rule of law talent training bases, and discusses together the paths for training foreign-related rule of law talents. Fourth, through written research, discussion research, expert lectures, and field trips, it carries out in-depth research work in various aspects.

In response to the challenges of long litigation periods in intellectual property cases, Shanghai courts have promoted the acceleration and enhancement of intellectual property trials. Among them, the Shanghai Intellectual Property Court has focused on promoting diversified dispute resolution, vigorously deepening case分流, and continuously strengthening trial management. It has successively established cooperative relationships with 23 professional mediation organizations such as the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in Shanghai and several arbitration institutions, and has established a joint working model with the Shanghai Intellectual Property Protection Center, achieving a steady increase in the success rate of mediation. The average case closure time has been reduced from 211.6 days in 2023 to 169.32 days in 2024, and the average trial period of the fast trial team has been compressed to about 40 days. Qiu Suo, a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and a senior partner of Jin Tiancheng Law Firm in Shanghai, said that the Shanghai courts have strengthened cooperation and docking with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center in Shanghai, actively participated in global governance under the framework of WIPO, demonstrated the international vision of the Shanghai courts, and created a fair competitive legal environment for enterprises.

In the continuous optimization process of the rule-of-law business environment in Shanghai, many \firsts\ have been established. In Pudong, the country's first CCC exemption management measures - \Shanghai Pudong New Area Regulations on Exempting from Compulsory Product Certification\ were introduced, including the first expansion of the exemption application subject, the first establishment of a convenient channel qualification, and the first establishment of an exemption testing pilot, which not only allows research and manufacturing enterprises to devote more energy to technology research and innovation, but also maximizes the policy effect, helping enterprises to speed up and reduce costs, and providing policy \golden weights\ for serving new enterprises in attracting investment and upgrading existing enterprises.

In terms of intellectual property review and protection, Shanghai also has a \pioneering\ approach. Yu Chen, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Intellectual Property Bureau, stated that the \Shanghai Municipal Data Product Intellectual Property Registration and Proof Preservation Interim Measures\ is the only document jointly issued by the Intellectual Property Bureau and the Data Bureau. As the highest-level normative document among the pilot provinces and cities in the country at present, it has undergone public opinion solicitation and fair competition review, legality review, and has been approved by the executive meeting of the Shanghai Municipal Government.

In addition, among the 17 national pilot provinces and cities for data intellectual property, Shanghai is currently the only pilot place that carries out substantive examination on the \intellectual property attributes\ of data registration products. Unlike other pilot places, Shanghai not only conducts formal review on the applied data products but also examines whether the data products have \substantial processing\ and \innovative labor\, focusing on whether there are application scenarios and whether they belong to intellectual achievements.

Investigation Notes

Shift from element-driven to rule-driven.

In the current context of a sluggish global economic recovery and accelerated industrial chain restructuring, Shanghai, as the \pioneer\ of China's reform and opening up, is using the rule of law as an anchor point to continuously optimize the business environment, attracting more enterprises to strengthen their confidence and invest and start businesses in Shanghai.

The rule of law is the most fundamental guarantee for the business environment. Shanghai is building the \four beams and eight columns\ of the business environment through systematic institutional innovation. The \Shanghai Action Plan for Focusing on Enhancing Enterprise Perception and Continuously Creating a World-Class Business Environment\ (Version 8.0), released in 2025, forms 58 reform tasks from market access, dispute resolution to bankruptcy handling, directly addressing the pain points of enterprises. More groundbreaking is the \Shanghai Interim Measures for the Registration and Certification of Intellectual Property Rights of Data Products\, as the only pilot in the country to conduct a substantive review of the \intellectual property attributes\ of data products, Shanghai has accepted hundreds of applications, covering core industries such as artificial intelligence and biomedicine. This \system first, scenario landing\ model not only protects the core assets of enterprises but also activates the data factor market.

Standing at a new historical juncture, the construction of Shanghai's rule-of-law business environment is transitioning from \factor-driven\ to \rule-driven\. It is essential to continue breaking through in aspects such as institutional innovation, law enforcement efficiency, international alignment, enterprise services, and social collaboration. By resolving the institutional vacuum of emerging industries through dynamic legislative mechanisms, reconstructing judicial service processes with the aid of digital technology, and enhancing the ability to allocate global resources by aligning with international rules. Effectively leverage the role of the rule of law in consolidating foundations, stabilizing expectations, and benefiting the long term. Accelerate the dynamic adaptation of the legal system to new economic forms, establish a rapid legal response mechanism, and promptly convert pilot experiences into institutional achievements; continuously improve the standardization and transparency of law enforcement, avoid \campaign-style enforcement\, strengthen coordination among law enforcement departments, perfect the law enforcement supervision platform, and ensure the full process transparency of the \inspection code\; actively adapt to the higher demands of the rule of law set by the new World Bank assessment standards, benchmark international commercial rules, promote the output of \Shanghai Rules\ in international commercial trials, and enhance cross-border judicial cooperation; increase the intensity of legal popularization for enterprises, promote public welfare services such as \legal health checks\, and establish a mechanism that links enterprise credit evaluation with incentives. Continuously break through institutional bottlenecks and enhance governance efficiency to build a more resilient and globally competitive rule-of-law business environment.