As the Chinese economy moves towards high-quality development,creating a business environment supportive of the private sector has become increasingly important.In recent years,China has made optimising the business environment a policy priority and has introduced targeted reforms to improve the business environment for the private sector.While these reforms have brought much success,the Chinese government continues to highlight the need for improvement.Amidst these discussions,the principle of ‘competitive neutrality' has been raised.Through a comparative analysis of international systems of competitive neutrality,this essay looks to examine it as a tool for optimisation of the business environment in China.Competitive neutrality is a legal and policy tool formed to encourage a better business environment.Introduced in Australia in the 1990 s competitive neutrality has evolved in its application in a range of other economies and even internationally since then.Competitive neutrality acknowledges the direct and indirect benefits that government businesses typically enjoy over their private sector counterparts simply due to their ownership.Through a range of measures,it seeks to eliminate these advantages to achieve an equal playing field for all enterprises.As the concept has been adopted by various developed countries,competitive neutrality has also begun to take on an international element,most notably its inclusion in the TPP negotiations.Analysis of the Chinese economy demonstrates that there are still areas where government businesses enjoy significant advantages over the private sector,distorting the market and reducing the efficiency of government resource allocation.Competitive neutrality represents a feasible tool to reduce these imbalances and optimise the business environment.The competitive neutrality system of Australia,the European Union and the United States provide a reference for China to draw from in developing its own system of competitive neutrality with its own characteristics.After forming a competitive neutrality framework appropriate for its own context,China's Pilot Free Trade Zones provide a unique opportunity to test and evaluate it.In the context of the push towards developing competitive neutrality as an international norm,China can also use this framework to promote its own interest internationally,through a competitive neutrality adapted to developing countries. |