The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to build a unified national market and improve the basic system of market economy. Accelerating the construction of a unified national market is an inherent requirement for improving the socialist market economy system and a strong support for building a new development pattern. From the perspective of economic development laws, a unified national market is a typical feature of a large country's economy. As the world's second-largest economy and the second largest consumer market for goods, China has a large market size, strong industrial resilience, the most complete industrial system in the world, and continuously enhanced technological innovation capabilities. These are the prerequisites and foundations for China to always have the advantage of sufficient market supply. Accelerating the construction of a unified national market can better play the role of market regulation and resource allocation through market mechanisms, guide investment and industrial flow, promote production industries and related enterprises to adjust their output structure, promote product and industrial upgrading, form a dynamic market competition pattern, and provide strong support for high-quality economic development. The key to building a unified national market lies in improving the market system and perfecting the market mechanism. The market system should have a complete structure, reasonable proportion, and complete functions. The commodity market and factor market, tangible market and intangible market, domestic market and international market, spot market and futures market, and other types of markets all have specific roles and functions, coexist and cooperate with each other to form a market system, providing support for the smooth circulation of the national economy. The effective operation of market mechanisms requires the full play of price mechanisms, competition mechanisms, supply and demand mechanisms, risk mechanisms, etc., and the establishment and improvement of legal regulations and institutional systems. In terms of improving the market system, it is necessary to cultivate a large number of dynamic business entities, loosen the burden on enterprises by eliminating unnecessary approvals, stimulate market vitality, and create a favorable environment for innovation and entrepreneurship; We also need to continuously improve consumer income levels, enable more people to have the ability to consume, innovate products and services, and stimulate new consumer demands. In terms of improving market mechanisms, the focus is on deepening the market-oriented reform of factors, based on the formation of a reasonable factor pricing mechanism, further optimizing market economy basic systems such as property rights protection, market access, fair competition, and social credit, and regulating economic activities with unified market rules. Specifically, improvements can be made in the following aspects. Accelerate the construction of a high standard market system. Eliminate local protectionism and market segmentation, establish a system of power lists and negative lists, delegate administrative approval powers, and fully implement the fair competition review system. Strengthen the construction of the standard system in the circulation field, promote the mutual unification of various standards at different levels, and facilitate effective connection between standards. Accelerate the formulation and implementation of standards in key areas such as smart logistics, e-commerce, and agricultural product circulation. Improve the supervision and evaluation mechanism for the implementation process of standards, strengthen the application of standards in administrative management such as certification, testing, market access, and law enforcement supervision, and gradually form a unified national standard system. Promote information sharing in multimodal transport, strengthen the connection of standards and rules for different modes of transportation, promote integrated operation and networked cooperation across departments, regions, organizations, and modes, reduce the cost of switching between transport entities, accelerate the implementation of the "one bill system" and "one box system" modes of multimodal transport, and innovate the standards and norms for mutual recognition of waybills. Create a more fair and dynamic market environment. Standardize improper market competition and market intervention behavior, strengthen anti-monopoly and anti unfair competition, resolutely break down market access barriers, and regulate the scope of monopolistic and competitive business carried out by natural monopoly enterprises. Improve market access and exit mechanisms, lower market entry barriers for mid to high end industrial manufacturing enterprises with large market potential, high added value, and high technical requirements, provide opportunities and conditions for transformation and upgrading, and guide long-term loss making and unable to turn losses out of the market through market-oriented means to optimize industrial structure. Standardize local investment promotion laws and regulations, improve bidding system rules, avoid low-level redundant construction and excessive homogeneous competition, timely clean up policies that hinder unified market and fair competition such as local protection, market segmentation, and designated transactions, clarify that local governments shall not set obstacles for enterprises to operate or relocate across regions, and shall not set unreasonable and discriminatory entry and exit conditions to restrict the free flow of goods, services, and factor resources. Promote infrastructure connectivity and improve the layout of urban and rural circulation systems. Breaking free from regional constraints, taking into account factors such as differences in regional economic development levels, geographical environments, and technological applications, we will gradually promote seamless integration of regional circulation networks in terms of balanced layout of circulation network facilities, distribution of circulation network nodes, positioning of urban circulation functions, complementary urban-rural circulation facilities, and cross regional and cross departmental coordination and governance. Strengthen the effective connection between the construction plan of the circulation system and relevant plans such as urban and rural planning, land planning, and transportation planning, coordinate and integrate resources, and focus on supervising the joint construction and sharing of circulation facilities, circulation system docking, and circulation information sharing in different regions. Reasonably plan the construction of transportation and information networks in rural and western areas, enhance the coordination ability of circulation systems between different regions, strengthen functional zoning, gradually eliminate the gap in urban-rural circulation levels, optimize the layout of the national circulation network, and improve the quality and efficiency of circulation system operation. Empowering the construction of a unified national market through the development of the digital economy. By integrating fragmented or discrete information within the market, instant sharing can be achieved on digital platforms, breaking down the spatial and geographical limitations of goods, services, and information transmission. The information connectivity function of digital technology can be utilized to improve the efficiency of supply and demand matching, reduce information search costs, bargaining costs, and decision-making costs in the transaction process. Establish and improve laws and regulations related to data element transactions, strengthen supervision of the digital economy market, improve the construction of the data element market system, explore efficient pricing mechanisms for data elements, accelerate the clarification of data ownership, continuously improve the level of data transactions, and enhance the security protection capabilities of the data element market. Efforts will be made to promote the construction of digital infrastructure, optimize the layout of digital infrastructure, bridge the "digital divide" between regions and urban and rural areas, eliminate market barriers between urban and rural areas, and meet the technological and infrastructure needs of explosive growth in data volume under the background of digital economic development, providing a solid material and technological foundation for establishing a unified national market. The national unified market we want to build is not only large in scale and high in quality, but also an efficient, standardized, fair competition, and fully open market. The construction of a unified national market will undoubtedly effectively promote the steady improvement of market efficiency, continuous optimization of market environment, upgrading of market structure, and better promote high-quality economic development. (Xinhua News Agency) Author: Yi Shaohua (Director and Researcher of the Market Circulation and Consumption Research Office at the Institute of Finance and Economics Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)