Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, was classified as a business environment innovation city, according to a report released by China Media Group on April 3.

This picture contrasts the equally impressive ancient and super modern aspects of Xi'an. [Photo/Xi'an municipal government's WeChat account]

The report analyzed cities using six indicators – reforms of their market mechanisms, the optimization of public services, improvements to  opening-up, innovation of regulatory systems, removal of regional barriers, and optimization of investment and construction.

Xi'an stood out in terms of the improvement of its opening-up and the optimization of investment and construction.

In the first category the city was lauded for its efforts in cross-border trade, foreign investment, cross-border financial services and foreign-related legal services.

Xi'an launched the country's first pilot land port for departure tax rebates, pioneered a new model for international factoring in US dollar financing in the country, built the Xi'an assembly center for the China-Europe freight train and explored new operation models of the freight train.

All of these were seen by the report as powerful measures for Xi'an to boost its opening-up further. In addition, Xi'an has established and improved a whole-process tracking service system for investment promotion and projects.

The optimization of investment and construction mainly considered the city's ecological construction, engineering construction, water and electricity consumption, green transformation, support of scientific and technological research and development support and intellectual property protection.

In recent years, Xi'an has insisted on leading the way for the improvement in its business ecosystem development through key reforms and innovations.

Nowadays, it only takes half a working day there to complete the start-up of an enterprise at a minimal cost.

What's more, the approval time for construction projects has been slashed from 388 working days previously to an average of 48 working days now – and more than 90 percent of the personal matters of residents can be handled within 15 minutes on foot.

Moving forwards, plans are for Xi'an to actively fashion a business environment ecosystem that is more conducive to the growth and development of its various business entities.