CPC plenum resolution shows China's resolve to further open up

Chinese officials and observers say a resolution adopted last week by the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee has decidedly demonstrated China's resolve to ramp up its opening up efforts.

The world is currently undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, with increasing external uncertainties, but this will not affect China's firm determination and confidence to continue deepening reform and expanding opening up, Mu Hong, deputy director of the Office of the Central Commission for Deepening Reform in charge of routine work, said at a press conference on Friday.

"Opening up is a defining feature of Chinese modernization," according to the resolution, which was adopted at the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee.

"We must remain committed to the basic state policy of opening to the outside world and continue to promote reform through opening up. Leveraging the strengths of China's enormous market, we will enhance our capacity for opening up while expanding international cooperation and develop new institutions for a higher-standard open economy," the resolution said.

It laid out five key points to denote how China will pursue high-standard opening up. They include efforts to steadily expand institutional opening up, deepen the foreign trade structural reform, further reform the management systems for inward and outward investment, optimize the layout for regional opening up and improve the mechanisms for high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

These initiatives will build on China's countless achievements with regard to opening up in the past decade.

In Qianhai, an emerging business area of south China's Shenzhen City, more than 120 new foreign enterprises are registered each month on average this year, marking a new wave of foreign investment.

In northwest China, a China-Europe freight train leaves or arrives at Xi'an international port station every 100 minutes on average. To date, the freight train network has reached 25 European countries and connects with 11 Asian countries. 

The eastern Chinese city of Ezhou is home to Asia's largest cargo airport, which operates 80 international cargo flights per week.

"China has been actively expanding its circle of friends in global economic and trade cooperation. Its trade with partner countries under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increased by 7.2 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2024," Wang Yiwei, a professor at Renmin University of China and expert at the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade wrote in an article published on CGTN on Thursday.

"Despite anti-globalization sentiments, China's doors remain open and will only open wider," Wang noted.