Q：CCTV: Yesterday the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development issued a report titled “The Role of China’s Pilot Free Trade Zones in Promoting Institutional Innovation, Industrial Transformation and South-South Cooperation”, which speaks highly of the success of China’s Pilot Free Trade Zones (FTZs) over the past decade and recognizes China’s fruitful efforts in deepening reform and expanding opening-up. The Pilot FTZs were a unique development in China and can offer a reference point to other developing countries, the report says. What’s your comment on this?
A：Wang Wenbin: We have noted the report. This is the first special report on China’s Pilot Free Trade Zones (FTZs) by an international organization. It reflects the growing international interest in China’s Pilot FTZs. According to the report, China’s Pilot FTZs, through promoting investment and trade facilitation, developing innovation and technological capability, and expanding opening-up in key sectors such as services and the digital economy, have effectively improved government services and business environment, driven industrial transformation and upgrading, boosted FDI inflow, and accelerated China’s reform and opening-up.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of Pilot FTZs in China. A decade ago, President Xi Jinping came up with this strategic vision with an aim to enhance China’s domestic development and international cooperation. What started a decade ago has now grown into a constellation of 22 Pilot FTZs, providing a new pattern of reform and opening-up involving the coastal, inland and border regions. They have become a hallmark of China’s high-level opening-up. The growing number of Pilot FTZs also attests to the sustained progress in China’s in-depth and all-round opening-up and its determined steps in building an open economy at a higher level.
Openness is a key driving force behind the progress of human civilizations, an intrinsic path toward global prosperity and development, and also China’s hallmark in modern times. From launching the opening-up program 45 years ago to joining the WTO 22 years ago, from building the first free trade zone 10 years ago to the inaugural CIIE 5 years ago, China has never stopped its effort to pursue opening-up, never wavered in its determination of sharing development opportunities with the world and never undermined its confidence in “joining hands” with each other instead of “letting go” of each other’s hands and “tearing down walls”, instead of “erecting walls”.
China will remain an important opportunity for the world’s development, stay committed to high-level opening up, and make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all. China stands ready to work with other countries to make the pie of the global market even bigger, strengthen the mechanisms for sharing benefits globally, and explore new ways of international cooperation. China hopes to work with the rest of the world to make efforts in the same direction and make mutual achievements on a grand stage of openness to achieve steady progress in building an open world economy and deliver benefits to the world through win-win cooperation.
