China has pledged more efforts to spur the vitality of market entities and promote entrepreneurship as its economy reported a better-than-expected recovery in the first half of the year.

Chairing a symposium with entrepreneurs Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the enhancement of policy-based support to stimulate the vitality of market entities so that they can not only survive but also thrive.

At the meeting, Xi expressed his heartfelt thanks for the contributions made by all market entities to epidemic prevention and control, as well as to economic and social development.

More work should be done to implement tax and fee cuts, as well as rent and interest rate reductions, to ensure relief policies reach the primary level and benefit market entities directly, Xi said.

The following are some facts and figures for a better understanding of the country's market entities whose role was commended by Xi.

-- By the end of 2019, China had 123 million market entities, including nearly 38.58 million enterprises and 82.61 million individually owned businesses. Some 21.79 million new market entities were established last year alone, while the individually owned businesses created more than 200 million urban jobs.

-- In the first six months of this year, around 20,000 new enterprises were set up every day on average, roughly the same as last year, despite the disruptions of the COVID-19 epidemic to the country's overall economy.

-- As the country's economic backbone, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in different regions took the lead in returning to work and production during the country's battle against COVID-19.

The combined profits of SOEs surged 251.1 percent month on month in May, recovering to 94.5 percent of the level seen during the same period last year.

-- An important propeller of economic growth, private businesses -- accounting for over 90 percent of all enterprises in China -- currently contribute more than half of China's taxation, 60 percent of gross domestic product, 70 percent of technological innovation and new products, and 80 percent of urban employment.

In the face of the COVID-19 epidemic, private enterprises played a more prominent role in stabilizing foreign trade growth, with their aggregate foreign trade volume in the first half of this year accounting for 45.1 percent of the country's total, 3.5 percentage points higher than the same period last year.

-- Foreign-funded enterprises also logged rapid expansion as China steadily pushed forward its all-round high-level opening-up and made continuous efforts to improve the business environment.

China had slightly over 1 million foreign-funded enterprises by the end of last year. In 2019 alone, about 41,000 new foreign-funded enterprises were established in the country.