China has made considerable progress in speeding up the production and resumption of work, as small and medium-sized companies had a resumption of work rate of 71.7 percent as of Tuesday, according to the nation's top regulator in the industry.

Qin Zhihui, deputy director of the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Bureau at the Ministry of Information, told a news conference on Wednesday that Chinese SMEs are gradually returning to work amid the government's ongoing efforts to fight the novel coronavirus.

According to Qin, the disclosed resumption of work rate is 42.1 percentage points higher than that in Feb 23.

To hedge against the coronavirus outbreak's impact, China has been actively accelerating the push for resumption of work and rolling out a series of measures, such as offering loans with discounted interests to support those hit badly by the epidemic, including SMEs, Qin noted.