CPC plenum resolution sends resounding signal on China’s further opening-up

Opening-up is a "defining feature of Chinese modernization," and the country will foster a first-rate business environment that is market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized and protect the rights and interests of foreign investors, according to a resolution on further deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization. 

Observers said these remarks send a resounding signal on China's firm commitment to opening-up, which defies certain Western countries' unilateralism moves and is set to further share the development dividends of the world's second-largest economy with foreign investors. 

The resolution, which was adopted at the just-concluded third plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, describes opening-up as a "defining feature of Chinese modernization." 

"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,'' according to the resolution.

China will foster a first-rate business environment that is market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized and protect the rights and interests of foreign investors in accordance with the law. China will expand the catalog of encouraged industries for foreign investment, appropriately shorten the negative list for foreign investment, remove all market access restrictions in the manufacturing sector, and promote wider opening with regard to telecommunications, the internet, education, culture, medical services, and other sectors in a well-conceived way, it said.

China will further reform its institutions and mechanisms to promote foreign investment, ensure national treatment for foreign-funded enterprises in terms of access to factors of production, license application, standards setting, and government procurement, and support them in collaborating with upstream and downstream enterprises in industrial chains.

The resolution of improving the high-standard open economic system includes five key areas: steadily expanding institutional opening up, deepening the foreign trade structural reform, further reforming the management systems for inward and outward investment, optimizing the layout for regional opening up, and improving the mechanisms for high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

These initiatives signal a commitment to enhancing the breadth of openness, such as attracting foreign investment, and the quality, such as enabling Chinese companies to expand overseas, to accelerate economic transformation, Bian Yongzu, executive deputy editor-in-chief of Modernization of Management magazine, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"Foreign investment plays a crucial role in China's economic development, both now and in the future. Meanwhile, they also benefited a lot from decades of China's miraculous rise. The initiatives provide foreign enterprises with greater confidence and assurance, effectively signaling that China offers abundant development opportunities and treats all investors equally," Bian said.

It also reflects China's proactive choice to expand its openness, which stands in sharp contrast to unilateralism and protectionist measures taken by Western nations, Gao Liankui, a Beijing-based economist, told the Global Times on Sunday. 

It also squarely debunked certain pessimist views claiming that foreign capitals have been fleeting out of China, analysts said. 

From January to June 2024, China established 26,870 new foreign-invested enterprises, up 14.2 percent year-on-year. However, the actual use of foreign capital amounted to 498.91 billion yuan ($68.63 billion), a decline of 29.1 percent from the previous year, China's Ministry of Commerce announced on July 13.