“Promoting higher-standard opening up and stabilizing the overall performance of foreign trade and foreign investment. Faced with changes in the external environment, we must stay committed to opening our door wider to the world, keep our industrial and supply chains stable, and make opening up a catalyst for reform and development,” Premier Li Keqiang proposed in the Report on the Work of the Government delivered at the Third Session of the 13th National People’s Congress.
“The achievements of China’s economic development are attributable to our country’s successful integration into economic globalization since its reform and opening up over 40 years ago. Making opening up, reform and development a catalyst for reform, development and transformation has been one of the key logics behind China’s economic development.” During an interview by China Trade News, Zhang Jianping expressed, driven by economic globalization and regional economic integration, global supply and value chain systems are continuously extending and connecting with each other, with regional production network systems increasingly improved and diversified, which signals global cooperation has entered an interdependent era. Mr. Zhang is a member of an experts committee of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (“CCPIT”) and director of the Research Center for Regional Economic Cooperation under the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce. At the moment, the external environment China confronts amid its development is highly uncertain and complex. Therefore, to build our new advantages in participating in international cooperation and competition, and fulfill high-quality development under new circumstances, China must further deepen reform and opening up, facilitate development through opening up, and tap the potential of foreign and domestic markets. During this process, we shall expand market access areas for foreign capital and private capital at home, better strengthen market competition, enhance the quality of products and services and continuously boost our country’s economic development level.
“The core of higher-standard opening up lies in the opening up of rules. As it has fully integrated into the global economic development system, China is now shifting from opening up of commodity and factor flows to that of rules. Hence it is essential to observe the law of changes in international economic and trade rules, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation at higher levels, and persistently build a market- and rules-based international business environment to boost its appeal to foreign capital.” Sang Baichuan, dean of the Institute of International Economy under the University of International Business and Economics, expressed, as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the world, some countries are showing growing unilateralism, posing challenges to global industrial and supply chains. As a manufacturing powerhouse, China plays a crucial role in the global industrial and supply chain system. Under such a circumstance, it is of particularly important significance for us to step up efforts in and facilitate higher-standard opening up, and let other countries around the world share the development achievements of China’s reform and opening up.
Pilot free trade zones (FTZs) are a new height of opening up and innovation. For the promotion of higher-standard opening up, it is mentioned in this year’s government work report that new pilot FTZs and comprehensive bonded zones will be established in central and western regions.
“China has built a pattern of all-round opening up today, which is fully expanding and deepening from eastern coastal regions towards central and western regions. The latter have transformed into the frontline of opening up from a periphery in the past. It is hence of great importance to step up opening up in central and western regions.” According to Mr. Sang, these regions have late-mover advantages in furthering opening up and thus can achieve more. They have abundant natural resources and relatively low labor costs. Moreover, some cities in these regions are key to fulfilling the “Belt & Road” Initiative. Therefore, establishing pilot FTZs there is conducive to building a better business environment through local pilots, prompting these regions to participate in global economic cooperation and competition, but also to facilitating opening up and reform based on local conditions, and forming reform experience which adapts to the development characteristics of these regions.
In the opinion of Zhang Jianping, with the ever deepening of “Belt & Road” construction, central and western regions are showing growing potential in developing border economic and trade cooperation with peripheral countries. Establishing pilot FTZs and comprehensive bonded zones in these regions at a faster pace is instrumental to driving the development of these regions through ramped-up opening up, and effectively facilitating the transformation of systems and mechanisms there through reform and opening up to bring them new growth drivers and create a new pattern of openness, innovation and development.
Economist Song Qinghui remarked, the Chinese economy is currently in a critical stage of transformation and upgrade. Establishing new pilot FTZs and comprehensive bonded zones in central and western regions not only helps prop up foreign trade, stabilize economic growth, but also create a favorable development environment for such transformation and upgrade. For the time being, China intends to encourage local governments to explore boldly through the test field of pilot FTZs, which in itself is a system innovation, so that the dividends of reform can be gradually released to effectively make up for the imbalances in regional economic development, thereby promoting the transformation and upgrade of the Chinese economy. He said, “Establishing new pilot FTZs in central and western regions also helps to better serve major development strategies such as the rise of the central region and large-scale development in the western region. This will play an active role in facilitating China’s opening up, help create more economic growth points and build key growth poles in central and western regions at a faster pace.”
Mr. Song believed, central and western regions completely possess the advantages and preconditions for establishing new FTZs, and have even greater potential than pilot FTZs in the eastern region to a certain degree. He added, as a number of major enterprises move their key cooperation areas from coastal cities in the east to central and western regions, their weaknesses in terms of talent, technology and capital will be gradually compensated for, which will greatly contribute to the rapid economic development in these regions. With the economic growth outlook in such regions immeasurable, an economic take-off can be expected.
Zhang Yongming Chairman ...
Promoting international trade, promoting utilization of foreign investment, prom...
CCPIT Beijing, a foreign economic and trade organization composed of representat...