Zhejiang Province on China's east coast has enacted a set of regulations to ensure the sound development of intermediary services and protect its citizens from frauds arising from such services.
Intermediary services have experienced rapid growth in Zhejiang in recent years, involving legal, accounting, auditing and appraisal services, technical consultancy, real estate brokers as well as employment and matchmaking services.
"There will be a growing demand for intermediary services as governments at all levels step up with their administrative reforms," said Zheng Zhigeng, director of the Provincial Legislative Affairs Office.
However, Zheng cited certain problems with existing intermediary services in Zhejiang, including small and slack organization, disordered competition, poor credit-standing and bad management.
As a result, illegal behaviors of some intermediary services such as presenting fake documents and other frauds have harmed the interests of the customers, he said.
The new regulations, which went into effect earlier this month, have spelt out the market access requirements of intermediary services and the government's role in supervising these services, said Zheng.
Zhejiang, which has reported the fastest economic growth since China started reform and opening up in the late 1970s, is the first province to set up rules of this kind.
(People's Daily February 28, 2002)
