The Standing Committee of the Shanghai People's Congress has suspended 521 items previously requiring administrative approval from the city's bureaucracy including 60 regulatory procedures. The move is a bid to cut red tape and make it easier to conduct business and follows Beijing's decision earlier this week to change its laws as an attempt to lure Hong Kong investors. The suspension will eliminate overlapping regulations among government departments and reduce the number of licences that businesses need.

Analysts say Shanghai is keen to make itself more user-friendly to investors as it tries to become a modern metropolis capable of soon joining the financial ranks of Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo. The city also hopes to capitalise on the high-profile Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit held last weekend.

One example means that public entertainment venues, such as theatres, no longer have to apply for a security certificate. Another change means businesses don’t have to get another type of licence to hire a driver.

"We don't mean to weaken our legal authority by suspending redundant procedures, but rather we are aiming at a better approach to solve problems more efficiently," said Sha Lin, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai People's Congress.

The committee voted to suspend the regulations yesterday after receiving a report from Jiang Sixian, secretary-general of the municipal government. "We discontinued these 60 items for the time being because they either overlap with existing regulations or can be realised through firmer government monitoring," Mr Jiang said.

The 521 items ranged from planning commission rules to waterworks regulations. They accounted for 25.7 per cent of the 2,027 items requiring administrative approval. The Shanghai government has announced it would like to cut those 2,027 items in half before the end of the year, meaning another round of cuts may come before China joins the World Trade Organisation.

In a speech on Wednesday, Vice-Premier Li Lanqing called for faster reforms in the mainland's administrative approval procedures. Much of China's red tape is left over from its state-planned economy days. Mr Li said the objective of cutting bureaucracy was to set up an administrative approval system that suited a market economy.