The Mayor's Office

The mayor's office is the ultimate source of authority for all decisions on investment and taxation. To be sure, there are regulations and guidelines regarding taxation and industrial investment issued by the Finance Ministry, Central Bureau of Taxation, State Planning Commission, and other central-government agencies. But these guidelines leave broad discretionary powers to local authorities, who have wide latitude in granting tax breaks and who have an abiding interest in directing investment to those sectors high on their development plans.

Unless the enterprise involved is substantially funded by a province or a central ministry, the mayor's office is the appeal of last resort in disputes over these issues. Usually it is only the largest or most controversial cases that are sent to the top for resolution. But such cases are brought to the top with enough frequency that in Dalian a "policy coordination group" (zhengce xietiao xiaozu ) has been established by the mayor's office, headed by the vice-mayor in charge of industry, to foster the prompt resolution of all of these questions; its members include the heads of the

finance, taxation, price, and labor bureaus. When the mayor's office has spoken on such a matter, that is the end of the issue, at least for the current year.