Wider opening-up drives foreign trade and FDI growth
China DailyA total knee replacement system made by Johnson& Johnson, a multinational company based in the United States, is displayed at the fourth China International Import Expo in Shanghai in 2021. Underpinned by its optimized COVID-19 response and steady economic recovery, experts and businesspeople believe that China will provide increasingly huge development opportunities for companies at home and abroad, especially as the ongoing two sessions are sending policy signals of strengthened efforts to expand high-standard opening-up and build an improved business climate. Experts and policy advisers said China will likely launch more policy measures this year to boost the confidence of foreign investors while improving the quality of overseas trade and foreign direct investment. "The key for China to retain existing FDI is to strengthen efforts on tasks such as establishing a unified, fair and orderly national market, enhancing policy consistency and firmly safeguarding the legitimate interests of businesses," said Huo Jianguo, vice-chairman of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies. To spur a new influx of FDI, he said China is expected to increase the level of openness in the services sector, improve the implementation of laws and policy measures that enable foreign investors, and revise regulations and legal provisions that do not conform to the principle of national treatment of overseas investors.