A bird's-eye view of Xiamen, a city that provides preferential policies for individual businesses from Taiwan. [Photo/WeChat account: xiamen_swj]

Residents from Taiwan can directly apply for registration as individual businesses in Xiamen, Fujian province from March 16, according to a notice jointly issued and implemented by the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce, and State Administration for Market Regulation on March 16.

The types of individual businesses are limited to individual operation, covering 122 items such as grain planting. The administrative approval involves a business scope that should follow relevant approval processes.

Xiamen launched a trial policy in early 2006, the first on the Chinese mainland at the time, allowing residents from Taiwan to apply for individual business licenses in 21 areas, including retail sales (excluding tobacco retail) and catering services.

In 2015, Xiamen's Market and Quality Supervision Commission and the Xiamen Area of the China (Fujian) Pilot Free Trade Zone issued a document that clearly proposed to support residents and farmers from Taiwan to set up individual businesses in accordance with the law.

The preferential policies in Xiamen have attracted an increasing number of businesses from Taiwan.

Statistics showed that in 2021, 110 new individual businesses from Taiwan were established in Xiamen, an increase of 13.4 percent year-on-year. As of March 15, Xiamen houses a total of 638 individual businesses owned by residents from Taiwan, accounting for over 30 percent of the province's total.