Incremental imports will be win-win for world economy

World
Europe

02:55

"China's initiative to expand imports is not a choice of expediency. It is a future oriented step taken to embrace the world and promote common development." That's a message delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the first-ever China International Import Expo (CIIE). And experts believe that expanding imports would be win-win for both China and the global economy.

"On the global side, we've seen a lot of analysts [who] expected the global economy to turn down from 2019 or 2020. So China's increased buying from the globe will increase the demands to the global economy. That's a win situation for the global economy," said Jimmy Zhu, chief strategist of Fullerton Markets, a New Zealand-based Forex brokerage.

China will also benefit from the increase of imports, according to Zhu. "First of all, when China increases the buying of commodities and hard materials, China will have a better saying in the prices of those products," he explained.

"And the second is when the foreign products come into China and the tariffs are lower, that will increase competitions between Chinese products and foreign products. So from this perspective, this will help increase the efficiency of Chinese products," Zhu added.

08:03

Opening up is another highlight in President Xi's speech. Xi stressed that the country would open wider, and would remain a strong advocate for openness in the global level.

Both the EU and Australian Chambers of Commerce are positive about that message, and are looking forward to a specific timeline of deeper opening up as soon as possible.

"Today, there is a really positive speech from President Xi, addressing some issues," said Nick Coyle, CEO of AustCham Beijing.

"The speech of President Xi is a good speech. It's following the topic we heard in the Davos in 2017," Carlos D'Andrea, vice president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, shared a similar opinion. "But what do we need now is a clear map of reform. We need the timeline," the VP added.

In fact, the Chinese President has vowed greater efforts in five areas to further open the Chinese market, including boosting import potential, furthering broaden market access, building a world-class business environment, building new pilot free trade zones for opening-up, as well as furthering the development of multilateral and bilateral cooperation.

"One of the objectives for CIIE is to let global business people know how to run business in China. In the next few years, I think it's very important to invite small or medium companies from the developing nations to understand the culture of China and how to run the business in China. We probably expect that kind of thing to happen," Zhu told CGTN.