China to further expand high-level opening-up: Government Work Report

China will take measures to expand high-level opening up, and strive for mutual benefit leading to all-win outcome with other countries and regions around the globe, said Premier Li Qiang on Tuesday.

Li made the statements in delivering the annual Government Work Report at the Second Session of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) — the country’s highest organ of state power — in Beijing.

“China will expand high-level opening to the outside world, and promote mutual benefit leading to all-win outcome. We will promote stabilization of the foreign trade volume, support enterprises in developing diversified markets, promote healthy development of new business formats such as cross-border e-commerce, expand new growth points such as the intermediate product trade and green trade, and actively expand the import of high-quality products.” said Li.

“We will roll out policies to support innovative development of the service trade and digital trade, and strengthen efforts to attract foreign investment. We will comprehensively lift restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, and relax market access for telecommunications, medical and other service industries. We will ensure that foreign-invested enterprises are treated equally as domestic ones, and strengthen service guarantees for foreign investment. We will also implement in an in-depth way the strategy to upgrade free trade pilot zones, and create a new highland for opening to the outside world,” Li said in delivering the Government Work Report.

Li also said that the government will continue to push forward international projects including joint construction of the Belt and Road and construction of the new land-sea trade corridor.

“We will promote high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road, to deepen cooperation and pursue tangible progress, ensure implementation of the eight programs of action to support high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, steadily advance cooperation on major projects, and implement a number of ‘small yet smart’ people’s livelihood projects. We will accelerate construction of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. We will also deepen multilateral, bilateral and regional economic cooperation, negotiate and sign high-standard free trade agreements and investment agreements with more countries and regions, and fully and deeply participate in reform of the World Trade Organization to promote the development of an open world economy,” Li said.

Launched in 2017, the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor is a trade and logistics passage that was built by provincial-level regions in western China and ASEAN members.