President Xi Jinping’s address at the conference of the 70th anniversary of CCPIT and Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit

Editor’s note: Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the conference of the 70th anniversary of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit via video link on May 18. Following is the full English text of the address, filed by Xinhua News Agency:

Your Excellencies Heads of State and International Organizations, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

Good evening. It is a great pleasure to meet you all online. To begin with, I wish to offer my warmest congratulations on the 70th anniversary of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and a sincere welcome to all guests attending the Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit.

I also wish to express our heartfelt appreciation and best regards to friends from all walks of life at home and overseas for your longstanding care and support to China’s reform, opening-up and modernization efforts.

Founded in 1952 as a China-based institution with a global outlook, the CCPIT has been playing an important role in strengthening the bond of interest between Chinese and foreign businesses, promoting international economic and trade exchanges, and facilitating state-to-state relations.

True to its founding mission of serving Chinese and foreign businesses, the Council has worked to promote trade and investment and advance China’s institutional opening-up. It has explored innovations in international economic and trade arbitration, intellectual property right services, and commercial mediation, among others.

It has kept up close ties with business communities across countries, provided platforms and opportunities for trade and economic cooperation between China and the rest of the world, and contributed to an economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all.

The 70-year journey of the CCPIT has been an epitome of China’s everexpanding opening-up endeavor, and an important witness of how businesses from different countries could share in development opportunities and benefit from win-win cooperation.

It is my hope that the Council will continue to break new ground with its tradition of excellence, strengthen its service network for businesses, expand its international circle of friends, and score still greater achievements in contributing to high-quality development and a new development paradigm in China and to an open world economy.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

Our world is facing a pandemic and drastic changes both unseen in a century. Economic globalization is experiencing headwinds, and the world is entering a new period of volatility and transformation.

Now more than ever, business communities across the world yearn for peace and development, call for fairness and justice, and aspire for winwin cooperation. For this to happen, I would advise efforts on the following four fronts.

First, we need to pull together to defeat COVID-19. The pandemic has been going on unabated. Resurging with ever faster transmission, it is posing a serious threat to the life and health of the people, and taking a heavy toll on the world economy.

We must put people and their lives first, actively engage in international cooperation on vaccine R&D, production and distribution, bolster global public health governance, jointly build multiple lines of defense against the virus, and work for a global community of health for all.

Second, we need to reinvigorate trade and investment. We need to balance pandemic response and economic development, strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination across countries, and get the global economy out of the woods at an early date.

China has put forward a Global Development Initiative, which calls for concerted efforts to advance the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in all respects. We need to help the global economy upgrade its growth drivers, shift its growth model and adjust its structure so as to steer it onto a track of long-term, healthy and stable growth.

We should support the WTO-centered multilateral trading regime, ensure security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains, and make the “pie” of cooperation bigger to allow development gains to better trickle down to people of all countries.

Third, we need to unleash the power of innovation in driving development. We should tap into the potential of innovation in spurring growth, jointly step up intellectual property protection, make rules on the basis of extensive participation and consensus building, and foster an open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory environment for scientific and technological development.

We should intensify exchanges and cooperation on innovation, facilitate integration of science and technology with economic growth, increase the sharing of innovation results, and remove all barriers that hamper the flow of knowledge, technology, talent and other factors of innovation. By doing so, we will better unleash the gushing vitality of innovation.

Fourth, we need to improve on global governance. In today’s world, the future of all countries is closely linked. Seeking exclusive blocs will only lead the world to division and confrontation.

We should uphold true multilateralism, embrace a global governance vision featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and mobilize resources from across the world to meet global challenges and advance global development.

We should choose dialogue over confrontation, tear down walls rather than erect walls, pursue integration instead of decoupling, opt for inclusiveness, not exclusion, and guide reforms of the global governance system with the principle of fairness and justice.

I wish to reiterate that China’s resolve to open up at a high standard will not change, and that the door of China will open still wider to the world. China will continue to foster an enabling business environment that is based on market principles, governed by law and up to international standards.

We will pursue high-standard implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and offer more market, investment and growth opportunities to the global business community.

The 70-year journey of the CCPIT has been an epitome of China’s ever-expanding opening-up endeavor, and an important witness of how businesses from different countries could share in development opportunities and benefit from winwin cooperation.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends,

Let us join hands to uphold peace, development, cooperation and winwin partnership, work together to meet the problems facing the global economy, trade and investment, and jointly usher in an even brighter future.

To conclude, I wish the Conference a full success.