Path to growth
Advanced concepts seen as engine behind China's economic success
Foreign journalists commended China’s five major development concepts of innovation, coordination, greening, opening-up and inclusiveness during field tours around the country ahead of a pivotal Party national congress.
On Wednesday, the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will be convened in Beijing. It is set to be a new milestone in the Party’s success and in national rejuvenation.
Journalists from a number of countries see the upcoming CPC national congress as an event of vital importance.
“The 19th CPC National Congress is so important that it can be listed as one of the top three events in the modern world, because it will provide the CPC an opportunity to explicitly declare its policies and plans in the next five years before the next congress and even beyond,” said Caciuc Anatolie, a producer from Moldova’s state broadcaster.
The new policies and plans in the pipeline concern the world, as China is the second-largest economy, Caciuc said.
Innovation-driven
The country’s rapid growth has benefited from its advanced development concepts, he said, specifically noting that innovation and inclusiveness will bring more economic vitality to both China and the world.
Caciuc made the remarks when he visited Chengdu Qingbaijiang Railway Port Area, a pilot free trade zone (FTZ) in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. China currently has 11 pilot FTZs; the first was opened in Shanghai in 2013.
China has moved up the list of the world’s top 25 innovative economies, rising three positions from 25 to 22, according to a key index jointly released in June by the World Intellectual Property Organization, Cornell University and INSEAD.
Policymakers are steering the economy onto an innovation-driven growth path, encouraging an entrepreneurial wave, initiating reforms in research and development, and rolling out the “Internet Plus” and “Made in China 2025” plans.
About 1.57 trillion yuan ($230 billion) was spent on research and development in 2016 after a doubledigit average annual increase over the past five years, making it second in research and development spending after the US. China now ranks second in scientific papers published worldwide and third, after the US and Japan, in joining the “million patent club.”
China aims to become an “innovative nation” by 2020, an international leader in innovation by 2030, and a world powerhouse of scientific and technological innovation by 2050. Opening-up
“I visited China more than 10 years ago and witnessed the country’s great changes brought by opening-up,” Malkhaz Gulashvili, president of The Georgian Times, said when meeting with local officials in Chengdu.
China will roll out a nationwide negative list to further open up to foreign investment. The negative list model, which states the sectors and businesses that are off limits to foreign investment, will be adopted nationwide as early as 2018.
On August 16, the State Council issued a document saying that China would make its foreign investment environment “more law-based, internationalized and convenient” to promote growth and raise the quality of foreign investment.
“The country should continue to reduce market access restrictions for foreign capital,” the document said.
The negative list will help China develop an open economy and lead to comprehensive reforms to the country’s economic and social management, according to Gao Yuwei from the Bank of China.
China will introduce increasing number of fiscal and taxation support policies to encourage overseas investors to expand investment, the State Council said in August.
It has also accelerated the opening of its financial markets to spur economic growth. For example, overseas investors gained direct access to the Chinese mainland’s 10-trillion-USD bond market with the launch of Bond Connect in Hong Kong in July.
Inclusiveness
In regard to inclusiveness, a case in point is the Belt and Road Initiative, initiated by China in 2013 to connect the vibrant Asian economic circle at one end and Europe at the other.
“Inclusiveness is the key for us Belt and Road countries to participate in the China-proposed strategy. Sino-European freight trains provide a good way,” said Serik Korzhumbayev, editorin-chief of a Kazakh newspaper.
Sino-European freight trains now connect China with 29 cities in Belt and Road countries including Germany and Spain, according to the Ministry of Commerce.