Noting this year marks the 45th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up policies, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed on Saturday that China will continue to promote high-standard opening-up, and advance Chinese modernization on all fronts through high-quality development so as to provide all countries with new opportunities for openness and cooperation.

Xi made the remarks during a video speech at the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), which is held in Beijing from September 2 to 6 under the theme of "Opening Up Leads Development, Cooperation Delivers the Future."

The world today is confronted with accelerated changes unseen in a century and sluggish economic recovery. Trade in services is a key component of international trade, and the services sector is an important area of economic and trade cooperation between countries, Xi said.

Global cooperation in trade in services and the services sector is deepening, the process of digital-driven, smart and green growth is picking up speed and new technologies and new business forms and models are burgeoning, lending strong impetus to advancing economic globalization, reviving global growth and enhancing the resilience of world economic development, he said.

In developing the services sector and trade in services, China will work with all countries and parties to advance inclusive development through openness, promote connectivity and integration through cooperation, foster drivers for development through innovation, and create a better future through shared services, in a bid to jointly get the world economy onto the track of sustained recovery, Xi noted.

China will make its development environment more open and more inclusive, which will expand the globally-oriented network of high-standard free trade areas, actively engage in negotiations on the negative list for trade in services and investment, and open wider in such services areas as telecommunications, tourism, law and vocational examinations, said the Chinese president.

Xi stressed that China's national integrated demonstration zone for greater openness in the services sector as well as eligible pilot free trade zones and free trade port will be the first to align their policies with high-standard international economic and trade rules. The country will widen access to its services sector, advance the opening-up of cross-border services trade in an orderly manner, improve the level of standardization of services trade and steadily expand institutional opening-up, he added.

China will strengthen the bond of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, enhance synergy with development strategies and cooperation initiatives of various countries, deepen cooperation on services trade and digital trade with Belt and Road partner countries, facilitate the cross-border flow of resources and production factors, and foster more growth areas for economic cooperation, the president said.

Noting China will improve the path of innovation-driven development, Xi said it will move faster to cultivate new drivers for the digitalization of services trade, roll out pilot reform on basic systems for data, and promote the development of digital trade through reform and innovation. 

China will also establish a national voluntary greenhouse gas emission reduction trading market and support the services sector in playing a bigger role in green development, Xi said. It will push forward the integrated development of services trade with modern services industries, high-end manufacturing and modern agriculture to unleash more vitality for innovation, he added.

China will share the outcomes of the Chinese modernization drive, Xi said, stressing it will vigorously boost domestic demand, accelerate the building of a robust domestic market, take the initiative to increase the imports of quality services, and encourage more exports of knowledge-intensive services.

He noted that China will lend new impetus to global development with the opportunities generated by its vast market, and offer more and better Chinese services to the world through high-quality development in a bid to increase the sense of gains of people around the world.

At the end of his remarks, Xi stressed that the world economy thrives in openness and withers in seclusion. He called on all parties to join hands together in upholding the hard-won free trade and multilateral trading regime, share in the historic opportunities in the development of global trade in services, and work together for an even brighter and more prosperous future of the world.

(Cover: An exhibition area of the 2023 CIFTIS in Beijing, capital of China, September 1, 2023. /CFP)