A view of the Lujiazui area in Shanghai Photo: VCG

While transformations of the world unseen in a century are unfolding at a faster pace, the China Development Forum (CDF) held in Beijing saw much discussion of China's institutional opening-up. A Chinese expert said on Monday that China remains an important force in promoting globalization despite external uncertainties.

"China's high-speed development in the past was achieved through opening-up, and the country will advance Chinese modernization in more opening-up conditions," Wang Yiming, vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said at a seminar on the CDF on Monday.

China's ultra-large market scale, complete industrial and supply chains, as well as its increasingly open institutional environment, provide support for building an open world economy, according to Wang. "As income levels continue to rise and the middle-income group expands, China's market potential will be further unleashed," he said.

Wang Chunying, president of the Export-Import Bank of China, said at the same seminar that China can steadily boost institutional opening-up in several aspects. She called for continuous efforts to deepen global and regional economic and trade cooperation, actively participate in and lead global economic governance, and resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core, comprehensively and deeply engage in WTO reforms, fully leverage mechanisms like the Belt and Road Initiative and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership so as to promote the overseas application of the country's institutional innovations.

In addition, efforts should be made to actively align with high-standard international economic and trade rules, and reasonably relax foreign entry access, she said, noting that the country should also accelerate the development of free trade zones and free trade ports to play a leading and demonstration role.

This year's Government Work Report pointed out that "We should steadily expand institutional opening-up and take the initiative to open wider and advance unilateral opening-up in a well-ordered way, so as to promote reform and development through greater openness." 

China has taken solid steps to expand high-level opening-up. Recently, China approved 13 foreign-invested companies for pilot operations in value-added telecom services in Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan and Shenzhen, while granting licenses to wholly foreign-owned hospitals in locations including Shanghai and North China's Tianjin.

In January, the People's Bank of China and several other departments jointly issued a guideline to allow foreign financial institutions to conduct the same new financial services as domestic players, as part of the 20 measures it introduced to promote institutional financial opening-up in eligible free trade zones.

"We've been in China for over 165 years, and are proud to be a part of China's growth and transformation story," Bill Winters, group chief executive of Standard Chartered, told reporters during the forum.

China's growth story over the past two decades has been phenomenal. It hasn't stopped, and the story has shifted. It is now about transformation and unleashing new productive forces to flourish to support high-quality growth, Winters said.

"China's story of success [in the past 40 years] is not just the story of China but also the story of foreign companies. So, I'm one who would advocate that US companies and foreign companies continue to be able to participate here in the economy," Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, told reporters on the sidelines of the CDF on Monday.

Hart said that many US companies are doing well in China, and "we want to continue to seize opportunities."