Employee Wang Jing (right) from STAr Technologies (Wuhan) Co Ltd gets some advice about a social security card at the service center for employees and businesses, in the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone in Wuhan, on Sept 14. [Photo/cjn.cn]

Nowadays, it takes less than 10 minutes for people to get their new social security cards at the self-service terminals in the East Lake High-Tech Development Zone -- also known as Optics Valley of China -- located in Wuhan, in Central China's Hubei province.

The zone's service center for employees and businesses recently introduced self-service terminals for tax receipts, social security cards and self-service printing of business licenses. This enabled over 2,000 enterprises to deal with related business in a more efficient and convenient way.

The zone has been committed to improving its business environment by providing more convenient services for market entities for years.

Last year, Optics Valley issued "guidance on deregistration" -- the first one of its kind in Wuhan.

As early as seven years ago, the zone had already simplified the process and materials for starting a business -- cutting the original 32 pages of materials to two -- which was promoted by the State Council in the all places to reform original business system.

A self-service business-license printer is now located at the service center for employees and businesses in the Optics Valley. [Photo/cjn.cn]

The zone also made an effort to simplify the admin for industrial and investment projects and looked at separating operating permits and business licenses.

As a result, people can now enjoy the convenience coming from different government departments working jointly.

That's changed things dramatically, officials said. Whereas previously an individual applying to open a pharmacy needed four kinds of licenses from four departments to get approval within 98 days, now, only 21 days are needed.

Now, 21 copies of materials need to be submitted, much less than 43 copies need in the past.

Thanks to its more efficient and convenient services, the zone had become home to as many as 100,000 enterprises and more than 140,000 market entities by the end of August.

It was also home at end-August to 46 stock exchange-listed companies, 10 of which had been listed in the last three years.