China’s SMEs See Improved Development Environment in 2025

According to a new report, China’s pursuit of new, high-quality economic growth and targeted policy measures aimed at stabilizing employment, businesses, markets, and expectations contributed to the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) steadily improving development environment in 2025.

The China Center for Promotion of SME Development’s 2025 report on the development environment of SMEs covered 50 cities and assessed the market, legal, financial, innovation, and policy settings for SMEs using an indicator system.

The overall SME development environment in all of the evaluated cities was judged to be improving, and the comprehensive scores’ coefficient of variance narrowed even more than the year before, suggesting a closing gap across cities.

With more than 90% of businesses satisfied with fair market access and greater access to production elements, a fair and competitive market order developed more quickly. According to the report, administrative reconsideration was crucial in settling administrative conflicts, and law enforcement became more uniform. Twenty-three cities achieved a comprehensive settlement rate of more than 80%.

The average percentage of inclusive loans to micro and small businesses in total RMB loans reached 12.04 percent among examined cities, demonstrating the expansion of inclusive finance’s reach and improvement of credit accessibility.