183,300 enterprises were established in Beijing last year, with an average daily registration of 790.26 companies.

The average capital of these market entities reached 17.85 million yuan($2.66 million), a year-on-year increase of 6.9 percent, ranking first among all the provinces and cities across the country.

As per the statistics released by the Market Supervision Administration of the Beijing Municipality suggest, the business environment in Beijing continued to be improved, market access threshold was sharply lowered, and now it only takes five days for companies to start businesses, which proves that remarkable progresses have been achieved in registration facilitation reform.

By the end of 2018, 2.15 million market entities (including branches) were conducting businesses in the city, up by 2.7 percent and an increase of 55,700 over the same period of last year.

The growth rate of enterprises was the fastest. By the end of 2018, 1.65 million enterprises were established in Beijing, a year-on-year increase of 6.5 percent; 489,000 individual businesses have been registered in the city, down by 8.4 percent year-on-year.

The rapid growth of enterprises and the decline of individual businesses has promoted the optimization of the market structure.

Emerging service industry grows at a rapid pace

The service industry makes prominent contributions to the growth of enterprises. Among all the enterprises established last year, the number of companies in the tertiary industry (services) accounted for 94.4 percent, with registered capital accounting for 90.3 percent.

By the end of 2018, the number of service enterprises in Beijing reached 1.54 million, up 6.5 percent compared with the same period last year and accounting for 93.9 percent of the total. The registered capital of these companies amounted to 32.33 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.6 percent and accounting for 84.2 percent of the total.

As shown by the figure, there were 1.73 million newly-registered enterprises in 2018, and an average of 756.01 companies was established on a daily basis.

Among them, information transmission, software and information technology services (a year-on-year increase of 6.2 percent), leasing, commercial businesses (a year-on-year growth of 4.8 percent) and other emerging services developed rapidly.

As of the end of 2018, Beijing was home to 553,400 technology enterprises, 327,900 companies in culture-related fields, and 9,882 financial companies. All these companies witnessed growth in numbers.

But, capital tends to accumulate in culture-related fields, and the average registered capital of such companies reached 42.63 million yuan, the figure is two times the average level of all the industries.

The registered capital of financial companies reached 463 million yuan, which is 21.91 times the average amount of enterprises in the city.

Among the newly established financial companies in 2018, there were 40 large enterprises with a registered capital of over 100 million yuan, accounting for 4 percent of such financial enterprises.

By the end of 2018, Beijing accommodated 8,980 sports enterprises, a year-on-year increase of 9.7 percent. Meanwhile, "cutting-edge" companies in Beijing also reached 595,500, accounting for 38.3 percent of the city's total number. Every day, around 292.77 cutting-edge enterprises were established in Beijing.

Besides, by the end of last year, "three cities and one district" (Zhongguancun Science City, Huairou Science City, Future Science City and Yizhuang Economic Technology Zone) had attracted the settlement of 464,800 enterprises, a 5.5 percent year-on-year increase.

Among these enterprises, 211,600 were technology companies, accounting for 45.5 percent of the total, 12.1 percentage points higher than the proportion of technology companies among all the enterprises in Beijing.

55,500 companies chose to enter "three cities and one district" in 2018, of which 29,700 were science and technology enterprises, accounting for 51.6 percent of the total number.

Increased investment in central and western regions

Enterprises in Beijing made 26,514 investments to other places in 2018, with the total investment volume reaching 864.15 billion yuan. Beijing also attracted the investment of 180.13 billion yuan from other cities.

In terms of capital flows, most enterprises in Beijing chose to invest in Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shandong, Tianjin, Hebei and other provinces and cities with higher economic levels or neighboring provinces and cities.

As to the increasing rate of investment, the investment of Beijing enterprises in central and western regions such as Guangxi, Shaanxi, and Yunnan has increased rapidly, with a year-on-year growth rate exceeding 10 percent.

One quarter of companies moved to Tianjin and Hebei

780 enterprises moved out of Beijing in 2018, including 766 domestic companies and 14 foreign-funded enterprises, with a registered capital of 89.49 billion yuan.

84.1 percent of these relocated enterprises were engaged in wholesale and retailing, scientific research and technology services, leasing and business services, and 72.2 percent of them moved to Hebei, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shandong, Hubei, Jiangsu, and Tianjin.

The reasons why these companies moved out are predicted to be the following: the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the removing of Beijing's non-capital functions and the impact of local policies.

To improve risk prevention and control capabilities of the financial industry, Beijing has strengthened its supervision of investment enterprises. As a result, companies engaging in investment and asset management accounted for 8.2 percent of enterprises that moved outside of the city in 2018.

In addition, competition in the same industry also prompted companies to move out of Beijing. Technology promotion and application services accounted for 91.4 percent of technology companies, and the huge number caused the homogenization of businesses and fierce competition. Therefore, such enterprises constituted 30 percent of the companies moving out.