Facing ever greater global changes in recent times, China has been adhering to building a community of shared future for humankind, maintaining economic globalization, advancing the Belt and Road Initiative and deepening its reform and opening-up. It has developed distinct perspectives on opening-up, national development and international relations.

Opening-up and free trade are the main drivers of global economic growth, while exclusiveness and protectionism are the fundamental causes of the global economic turmoil and slowdown. China has been adhering to opening-up to further integrate its development with the rest of the world.

China will continue to expand its opening-up. The 2019 negative lists for foreign investment market access were released on June 30. The new negative lists, one for the pilot free trade zones and the other for the rest of the country, have fewer restrictions compared with their predecessors. The negative list for FTZs this year reduce the access restrictions on foreign investors from 45 fields to 37, while the other general negative list reduces access restrictions from 48 to 40. The focus will be on greater openness in the agriculture, mining, manufacturing and services sectors. Six new pilot free trade zones are to be established and a new section of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone will be opened. Hainan province will also speed up exploration of building a free trade port.

The focus of China's opening-up has now switched from goods to services. To adapt to the rapid development of global service trade, China has introduced a string of measures to accelerate the opening-up of the domestic service industry, including the financial sector. And the country will further increase foreign access to service industries and promote adjustments and reforms of relevant systems.

Economic globalization is the driving force for the development of all countries. As it opens up further, China will share the fruits of its economic transformation and reform with the world. The Foreign Investment Law which will be implemented on Jan 1, 2020, clearly stipulates that foreign-invested enterprises will enjoy equal treatment and will be able to participate in government procurement. It also guarantees that China will strive to create a more stable, fair, transparent and predictable investment environment.

Through adhering to deepening market-oriented reforms, insisting on fairer global resource allocation and pursuing development focusing on openness, inclusiveness and sharing, China has been shouldering its responsibilities as a major power and it has contributed greatly to stable global economic growth. It has also focused on integrated development with other countries.

The development of China as an open economy is based on the deep integration of domestic and international markets. Based on annual average exchange rates, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China reached $5.76 trillion in 2018 and the per capita consumer spending reached $3,000. In 2017, the value of China's foreign investment and its accumulated outbound investment both ranked second in the world. An increasing number of other developing countries have attached great importance to China's investment to boost their own development.

China advocates development based on sharing and inclusiveness and it is practicing what it preaches. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has focused on achieving common benefits by means of consultation and collaboration, achieving infrastructure construction and interconnection and focusing on capacity cooperation, providing tangible benefits to the world. From 2013 to 2018, the total value of imports and exports between China and those economies participating in the Belt and Road Initiative exceeded $6 trillion. Chinese enterprises directly invested more than $90 billion in participating countries, with the turnover of its contracted projects in those countries exceeding $400 billion. As of September 2018, the initiative had gained the support of 105 countries and 29 international organizations.

China has adhered to sustainable and green development. Facing the common challenge of climate change, China has been pursuing sustainable green development. In the past few years, it has strengthened its environmental protection law enforcement and significantly restituted the deteriorated ecological environment in some regions. In terms of the Belt and Road Initiative, the country is promoting green infrastructure construction, investment and finance.

Amid the unprecedented global changes, China has advocated and is striving to promote the building of a community with a shared future for humankind. Faced with the challenges of unilateralism and trade protectionism, it has adhered to win-win cooperation and highlighted common development, shared responsibilities, win-win cooperation, inclusiveness and mutual understanding between different civilizations to avoid conflicts.

Based on its cultural emphasis on harmony, China seeks open, inclusive and balanced globalization. China has advocated global free trade and multilateralism and contributed to global economic development. In 2018, it reduced its average tariff rate from 9.8 percent in the previous year to 7.5 percent, while some countries significantly increased their tariffs.

It has advocated equal participation in joint global governance based on fairness. China supports the development of a new global governance structure and is committed to sustainable peace and common prosperity, staunchly opposing isolationism, hegemony and interference in other countries' affairs.

It has pursued win-win cooperation with other major countries. Since China-US relations can exert great influence on the global landscape, China will further deepen its reform and opening-up, promote cooperation, appropriately handle trade frictions, seek to fulfill its responsibilities in global governance with the United States and contribute to global economic growth.

As President Xi Jinping said in his speech at the G20 Summit in Osaka, the history of human society is marked by a transition from isolation and exclusion to openness and integration. This is an unstoppable trend, and we must open up further to embrace the opportunities of development and seek win-win outcomes through closer cooperation.

The author is president of the China Institute for Reform and Development.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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