Coordinating High-Standard Opening Up and Ensuring Stable High-Quality Development

Today, China faces the globalization of goods, services, production factors, and information, and competition among major countries has expanded from trade to other fields, including science and technology and finance, becoming more multifaceted, complex, and challenging. Countries with strong economies since the 18th century, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan, have developed comprehensive advantages in certain products, technology, production factors, shipping, and finance, giving them greater influence over regional, and even global, economies and trade.

High-standard opening up is an expansive and influential systems engineering project. It requires a concerted effort by all fields and government departments at all levels, together with strong planning and coordination. As our economy shifts from rapid growth to high-quality development, the matters requiring our attention have become more multifaceted and the factors requiring the cooperation of multiple parties have become more comprehensive. We must rally all forces and utilize all resources to create new synergies and collaborations for the success of China's opening up. 

Applying systems thinking to promoting high-standard opening up, we need to strengthen the integration, coordination, and efficiency of relevant systems. We also need to create a broader environment of opening up in which there is mutual infiltration and coordinated cooperation and exchanges of goods, capital, technology, talent, and data, in order to boost the overall efficacy of development and provide a solid foundation for Chinese modernization.

We need to increase coordination across departments, fields, and industries to develop a concerted force for opening up and development. We must accelerate the integration of foreign trade, foreign capital, foreign investment, and other economic and technological cooperation, as well as coordinated development between commodities and services trade, trade and investment, and the strategies of both “bringing into the country” and “going global.” We will better coordinate trade policies with fiscal, monetary, employment, industrial, regional, scientific and technological, and environmental policies, in order to unify our policy approach and achieve a policy consensus, thereby forming a joint force for high-quality development. 

Furthermore, we need to make opening up more overarching and coordinated and increase its overall intensity. We will participate in global scientific and technological cooperation, further open up the field of science and technology, form a globally competitive open innovation ecosystem, and enhance our independent innovation capabilities in the course of opening up. We will participate in-depth in the division of labor and cooperation across global industrial and supply chains, focus on cooperation regarding localized, integrated, and multi-dimensional development, and boost global resource allocation capabilities and international competitiveness. Premised on adhering to and participating in the global multilateral trading system, we will achieve a better balance of opening up to both developed and developing countries, in both multilateral and regional channels, strike the right balance between opening up by agreement and in a voluntary manner, and boost the comprehensive and systemic nature of our opening up. While improving the quality of trade and investment, we shall gradually strive to exert greater influence and decision-making power over the formation of systems and policies in the areas of international finance, trade and investment, and the industrial division of labor. 

Editor: Jiang Wenyan