Promoting high-standard opening up means that China “strives to create new opportunities for the world with its own development.”

Super large-scale market

Promoting high-standard opening up is one of the major principles for advancing Chinese modernization, the significant content and inevitable requirement for fostering a new development pattern, and the inevitable choice for building an open global economy. China adheres to the right course of economic globalization, upholds true multilateralism, and promotes the building of an open global economy.

Promoting high-standard opening up should be based on the advantage of China’s super large-scale market. The source of this advantage is its large population and relatively high-standard development. Promoting high-standard opening up should adhere to the coordination of development and security, and should be integrated with the building of an open world economy.

High-standard opening up

At present, China has entered into the development phase of high-standard opening up. In this phase, the coupling effect of domestic and international markets should be enhanced. To achieve this, the barriers between these two markets should be broken.

The quality and standard of trade and investment cooperation should be enhanced. Trade in goods should be optimized and upgraded continuously, a modern service industry developed, and the coordinated development of the digital economy and a strong trading economy should be fostered. Attracting foreign capital should be prioritized, and investment should be directed towards high-end manufacturing and modern service industries. Rates of return on outbound investments should be improved and risk lowered, so that investments can better serve domestic high-quality development.

A new pattern of opening-up in a wider scope, in greater breadth of each area, and at a deeper level should be fostered. Different regions of China have different levels of openness and different priorities. The eastern coastal areas should play a leading role and actively explore the direction of the future. The central-western and northeast regions should draw on the experience of the eastern regions and formulate strategies suitable for the regions. The pilot role of free trade ports and pilot free trade zones should be fully leveraged and the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port should be promoted. On the basis of the national layout and the accumulated achievements of many innovative systems, the quality of exploration of the pilot free trade zones has been improved. Given the remarkable achievements made in the establishment of global high-standard free trade area network, its expansion should be prioritized. To actively respond to the expectations and demands of the outside world and take advantage of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), we should actively align with international economic and trade rules on state-owned enterprises, intellectual property rights, labor, the digital economy, etc.

Open world economy

The building of an open world economy should be promoted. China opposes protectionism, the erection of “fences and barriers,” decoupling, disruption of industrial and supply chains, unilateral sanctions, and maximum-pressure tactics and other acts that hinder the progress of globalization. China has always been an active promoter of the right course of economic globalization. China strives to provide new opportunities for the world by way of its new development pattern.

The implementation of the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative should be promoted, so that peace, development and cooperation will be the main themes of the world, and common security will be the consensus of all countries. We will promote the high-quality development and make the BRI an important platform for cooperation among countries. China will actively participate in the reform and development of the global governance system, promote the internationalization of the RMB in an orderly manner, and facilitate multilateral mechanisms such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) to better play its role.

Su Qingyi is a research fellow from the Institute of Wold Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).