Under the current company registration procedures of the People’s Republic of China, before undertaking the approval and/or registration procedures for establishing a company, the investor(s) of a new company must first file a Name Pre-approval application with the company registration authority, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) or its local counterparts (AICs,). The AICs will reject a name pre-approval application if the proposed name is identical to the name of an existing company registered in the same industry in the same municipality. On October 18, 2016, SAIC issued its Guiding Opinion on Opening-up Enterprise Name Database and Promoting the Reform of Enterprise Name Registration (Guiding Opinion) to request local AICs to open their company name databases to the public. Now an applicant can check the company names of existing companies in the database to avoid using a duplicate name. This will simplify the company establishment process. Furthermore, SAIC indicated that it aims to abolish the name pre-approval requirement entirely in the near future.