"The China International Import Expo (CIIE) Has Built a Landmark Platform for High-Level Opening Up" is the latest article by Professor Zhang Min, Executive Dean of the Shanghai MICEE Institute and PhD supervisor at Shanghai University, published in China Exhibition Issue 20 (Total Issue 524) on October 30, 2022.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the CPC proposes that we must fully, accurately and comprehensively implement the new development philosophy, adhere to the reform direction of the socialist market economy, adhere to high-level opening up, and accelerate the formation of a new development pattern with domestic circulation as the main body and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other.
In the ten years since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping has attended more than 200 conferences&exhibitions, sent congratulatory letters to more than 120 Events, and personally planned, deployed and proposed the China International Import Expo (CIIE). He delivered keynote speeches at the opening ceremonies of each CIIE. The CIIE has built "the world's first national-level exhibition with import as the theme, which is a major initiative in the history of international trade development." "Let the open breeze warm the world!"
The CIIE aims to open up the Chinese market, promote global growth, deepen supply-side reform, achieve transformation and upgrading led by domestic demand, and meet people's needs for a better life during balanced and full development. The CIIE provides strategic opportunities for the development of all countries, including China, promotes in-depth market integration, orderly flow of factors, and efficient allocation of resources. It carries great realistic significance and far-reaching historical influence. As a key cooperation platform built by the Chinese government, after four sessions of efforts, the CIIE, a landmark project of China's high-level opening up in the new era, has entered the top six of the world's top 100 exhibitions, becoming a Chinese solution to globalization issues and a great practice for building a new system of open economy.
The CIIE, Canton Fair, China International Service Trade Fair, China International Fair for Investment and Trade, China International Consumer Products Expo, and a series of other large-scale national-level internationalized exhibitions, as well as tens of thousands of exhibition activities of all types held in China every year that they represent, have built countless market-oriented platforms for high-level opening up, promoted trade and investment, served the Belt and Road Initiative, and helped China become a major trading partner of more than 140 countries and regions. China's total trade in goods has ranked first in the world stably. China has entered the forefront of the world in utilizing foreign capital and making overseas investments, and has formed and is forming a new landscape of all-round opening up at a broader scope, wider field and deeper level.
Represented by the CIIE, in the past decade, China's exhibition industry has faithfully implemented the fundamental national policy of opening up to the outside world and adhered to the general direction of economic globalization, adhered to multilateral trade and investment, enabled China's development to provide new impetus for the growth of the whole world, and promoted more just and reasonable global governance, mutual understanding and friendship between the peoples of all countries, and joint response to global challenges to advance the building of an open economy under the guidance of shared human values such as peaceful development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom.
In the history of international trade, expos have always focused on exports to expand exports. This is mainly because the traditional view of wealth pursues trade surpluses and regards the highly abstract GDP index as all the wealth created by the national economy that year. Nowadays, people have re-recognized that apart from GDP, goods, services, rules, technologies, experiences, data, knowledge, talents are also wealth, even more precious wealth, because they can be transformed into capital through the market to achieve continuous multiplication and full flow of wealth. In this process, the market mechanism transforms wealth into capital and plays a mechanismal platform role. In this sense, the market has become the most scarce resource in today's world.
By opening up China's market of 1.4 billion people to the world, the CIIE allows world-class goods and services, especially the technologies, rules, experiences, data, knowledge and talents contained within, the opportunity to sustainably enter China's market in batches. On the basis of achieving balanced and full development of domestic and foreign demand, imports and exports, and introduction of investment, this provides new impetus for the growth of all countries in the world, reassures and strengthens globalization, and provides more opportunities for world-class goods and services to combine with China's producers and consumers to meet the needs of a better life, promote supply-side reform, and create a better new life for mankind.
The CIIE's functional roles are mainly embodied in five aspects. First, supporting economic globalization and trade liberalization through opening up. Second, building a community of shared future for mankind with international public goods. Third, enabling Chinese brands to become world-class through supply-side structural reform. Fourth, meeting people's needs for a better life by expanding imports. Fifth, achieving structural transformation of growth drivers led by domestic demand, and ushering in a new era of endogenous growth as a major country.
The CIIE reflects the inherent requirements of high-quality development in the new era, the ideological guidance of the new philosophy of open development, and the objective laws of the new system of open economy. It marks that the new philosophy of open development has taken root among the people, the new system of open economy is fully established, and the new landscape of all-round opening up is accelerating.
To realize Chinese modernization, China needs to promote reform, development and innovation through opening up, and achieve the transformation and upgrading of China's economy and the all-round establishment of an open economy in the process of taking the initiative to open up, opening up bilaterally, opening up fairly, opening up fully, and opening up for win-win results. Opening up has benefitted China and the world.
