Togetherness Leads to Prosperity
Facing new tendencies and challenges in the global economic landscape, China hopes to cooperate with h countries around the world to lay a foundation for open and inclusive global economic governance.
On November 5, 2018, the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) opened in Shanghai. At the opening ceremony, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech titled “Work Together for an Open Global Economy That Is Innovative and Inclusive,” manifesting China’s determination and action to open wider and pursue common development in the world.
Firstly, Xi’s speech evidenced China’s determination to further open and shined light on its future action plan.
Forty years ago, China launched its reform and opening- up policy. Thanks to persistent exploration and experimentation, China has achieved great progress in various fields. But amidst profound changes in domestic and international situations, China’s reform and opening up is also undergoing a new round of challenges and opportunities. Against this backdrop, Xi’s speech emphasized that China would stimulate the potential for increased imports, broaden market access, foster a world- class business environment, explore new horizons of opening up and facilitate multilateral cooperation, showcasing China’s determination to open wider to the world and shining light on its future plans.
Secondly, Xi’s speech exhibited China’s willingness and efforts to promote shared and inclusive development.
Because of economic globalization, different countries across the world band together to improve their living standards in different sectors to varying degrees. But today, the global economy is undergoing major adjustments characterized by rising protectionism and unilateralism. Economic globalization featuring multilateralism and free trade has met serious setbacks: A handful of countries over- emphasize and fixate on relatively minor losses while refusing to recognize net gains. These countries have taken unilateral action to pursue excessively narrow national interests, causing a negative impact on economic globalization and serious damage to the economic and institutional foundation for international trade cooperation. In this gloomy context, by hosting the import expo, China hopes to showcase its strong will to safeguard the overall interests of various countries and promote shared and inclusive development.
Thirdly, Xi’s speech outlined
China’s aspirations and related measures for peaceful coexistence.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, conforming to common aspiration of the international community, the country proposed the principles of peaceful coexistence in international relations. For a long time, by upholding the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, China has greatly enhanced its relations with other countries and made great contributions to regional and world peace. Although China’s national strength is much stronger than before, safeguarding peace and driving development are still the fundamental principles of the country in terms of international affairs. Facing the increasing unprovoked doubts and negative editorials, China chose to organize the CIIE to make clear that China favors cooperation over confrontation and peace over conflict in terms of relationships with other countries.
Finally, Xi’s speech showed that China will further advance the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative.
In May 2017 when the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was held in Beijing, Xi announced that China would hold the CIIE to inject new impetus into the development of the Belt and Road Initiative and create a new platform for world development. A year and a half later, the first CIIE arrived on schedule and immediately began providing a practical platform for participating countries to learn about and access the Chinese market to realize common prosperity. The CIIE is a major measure taken by China to advance the Belt and Road Initiative— it blazes a path to prosperity characterized by extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.
In the nutshell, the CIIE is a major step China has taken to shoulder global responsibility and promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity. Xi’s speech demonstrated to the world that China’s fundamental pursuits remain peace and development. Facing new tendencies and challenges in the global economic situation, China hopes to cooperate with countries around the world to lay a foundation for open and inclusive global economic governance.
have been stuck with heavy tariffs, followed by retaliation from the affected countries. In fact, more and more multinational corporations are worried about the policy trends of China, and the IMF recently warned that the world economy is facing downturn pressure due to the policy uncertainty from some major countries. The latest report from the WTO pointed out that the world trade index in the third quarter of 2018 was wavering at 100.3, a warning that means world trade is in the danger of decline.
Now, the first- ever importthemed state-level expo sent a strong signal that China will not close its door to the world, but will only become even more open. China attributes its economic miracle to the reform and opening up over the past 40 years. Aiming to build a stronger, higher- quality economy in the new era, China will hold steadfast to its opening-up policy, as stipulated in the Party Constitution.
Reinforcement of Chinese Solutions for Common Development
Xi said in his speech that a great vision, simple and pure, requires credible actions. China has continuously presented its solutions to achieving the UN’S Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) by 2030 while promoting world economic growth and common prosperity. And those solutions are deeply rooted in China’s past 40 years of experience in economic development which took place in an era of reform and opening up, with focus now tightening on innovation, cooperation and sustainability. Among these factors, reform and opening up are the fundamental and endogenous driving forces of economic growth, according to the belief and ideology of the ruling party of China. However, China advocates independent development based on every country’s own situation and opposes imposing so-called “ultimate standards” or “fixed modes” on others.
At the opening ceremony of the CIIE, Xi also announced five tasks China would undertake in the near future to further open up and promote world development: lower tariffs and other market barriers and accelerate trade facilitation to expand imports, further opening up service industries and simplify the negative list on investment to relax market access, promote openness and a transparent system to improve the business environment, accelerate exploration of free trade ports with Chinese characteristics, and promote multilateral and bilateral cooperation in pursuit of development. These are the concrete strategies which are certainly far from final solutions for world development, but are good starting points for a march to common prosperity.
Welcoming a Community with a Shared Future
With the slogan “New Era, Shared Future,” the CIIE represents a new landmark project for China’s higher-level opening up, while serving as a new platform for international cooperation for all countries to showcase their development achievements and discuss global economic and trade issues. But most importantly, the expo is another grand gesture from China to reinforce its commitment to build a community with a shared future for humanity. It is a new vision in the sphere of international relations and human development, which was first outlined by President Xi in 2011. The Belt and Road Initiative ( BRI), proposed by China in 2013, fully embodies the idea of a community with a shared future for humanity. The BRI emphasizes shared interests, shared responsibility and a shared future for different entities in the world, which transcends the capacity of explanations in the classical theory of realism or idealism.
The CIIE, like the BRI, is an initiative sponsored not solely by China itself, but by many countries and international entities together. It is a chorus sung by the international community as China aims to share its development opportunities with other members of the big global family and work together to build a beautiful world of sustainable peace and development.