Xi leads China's pursuit for higher-level opening-up

The fourth China International Import Expo, the world's first import expo held at the national level, will be held in Shanghai from Nov 5 to 10. Initiated in 2018, the event demonstrates China's stance of supporting the multilateral trading system and promoting free trade.

"Economic globalization represents the trend of history. It is just like the world's great rivers, the Yangtze, the Nile, the Amazon and the Danube: They all surge forward in great torrents, and nothing can stop their mighty flow, not the current of undertows or hidden shoals or rocks beneath the water," President Xi Jinping said at the opening ceremony of the second China International Import Expo on Nov 5, 2019.

At a time when globalization faces headwinds, unilateralism and protectionism are resurgent, and the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted normal economic exchanges, Xi's words illuminate a way forward for the world.

"Openness brings progress while isolation leads to backwardness. We need to stick together rather than drift apart. We need to tear down walls rather than erect them," Xi said at the opening ceremony of the first CIIE in 2018.

As a country with 1.4 billion people and a middle-income population of over 400 million, the Chinese market has unlimited potential.

Since China launched its reform and opening-up policy more than four decades ago, the country has benefited immensely from economic globalization, transforming a closed and semi-closed economy into a fully open economy, and the world has also benefited from China's opening-up.

Under Xi's leadership, China has opened its door wider to the world, and is pursuing higher-quality opening-up.

The country has vowed to foster a new development pattern where domestic and foreign markets boost each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay.

That does not mean China is developing its economy with closed doors, Xi told a symposium of entrepreneurs in July last year.

In fact, China is further integrating into the global system.

The country joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – the world's largest free trade bloc comprising 2.2 billion people – and concluded talks with the European Union on an investment treaty last year.

China has also officially applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, another free trade pact.

China is also joining other countries in achieving common development.

So far, the country has signed more than 200 documents on Belt and Road Initiative cooperation with 140 countries and 32 international organizations.

The country has also improved its business environment by leaps and bounds.

As the world's second-largest economy, the second-largest consumer market and largest exporter, China has scrapped limits on foreign investment in its financial market and shortened its national negative list to reduce the number of sectors that are off-limits for foreign investors.

In addition, free trade zones have been built to create favorable conditions for foreign businesses to invest in the Chinese market. 

According to figures published by the World Bank, China has made greater progress in terms of facilitating the ease of doing business. The country's ranking in the annual Doing Business report improved from 78th among 190 economies in 2018 to 31st in 2020.

As President Xi said, "The Chinese economy is not a pond, but an ocean. The ocean has its calm days, but also times of gales and storms… Gales and storms may ravage a pond, but never an ocean. Whatever the gales and storms, the ocean is still there."

Despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China's foreign trade in goods totaled 28.33 trillion yuan ($4.39 trillion) in the first three quarters of 2021, up 22.7 percent year-on-year.

During the first seven months, FDI inflows topped the $100 billion mark for the first time in history, a year-on-year growth of 30.3 percent.

"China's development, viewed through the lens of history, is an integral part of the lofty cause of human progress. China will reach out to other countries with open arms and offer them more opportunities in markets, investment and growth," Xi said.

With the fourth CIIE around the corner, countries around the world are set to join together to build an open global economy and a global community of shared future.