Premier Li Keqiang visited Nansha area in Guangdong’s free trade zone on Jan 5, and urged the province to deepen integration with Hong Kong and Macao.

Li said the province — the pioneer of China’s reform — should make full use of its advantageous geographical location and talents.

He called for more efforts to integrate the province with the special administrative regions — by focusing on the development of high-end service industries in finance and scientific research areas.

The Premier said that a city’s progress is reflected in the quality of its development, and does not only concern buildings and skyscrapers.

It takes 145 days instead of 799 for investment projects to be approved, while the total number of required administrative permits has been reduced from 103 to 10.

This is what Premier Li Keqiang was told when he visited the Nansha area in Guangdong province’s free trade zone.

Li said that Guangdong is a province that has always believed that “time is money,” and that it is the duty of the FTZ to streamline administrative approvals, invigorate the market and improve supervision after projects are launched. And he also encouraged the zone to further speed up the approval process.

Premier Li Keqiang looked at a chart that explains the 799-day approval process concerning an investment project in the Nansha area of Guangdong’s free trade zone.

Li said that “redundant approvals like this should be scrapped - they damage market vitality and cause corruption.”

The time required for administrative processing of an investment project has now been cut 80 percent following the reform of administrative approval requirements.

The Premier asked Guangdong province to continue spearheading the reform and explore ways to combine city plans - anywhere in China - for social and economic development, land use and overall planning.