By He Yin, China’s economy took center stage at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2024, which was themed “Rebuilding Trust”. Participants actively praised the enhanced resilience of China’s economy and businesses over the past two years. They acknowledged that China’s efforts would create more opportunities for global economic growth and employment.
China’s pursuit of high-level opening-up was seen as having a positive impact on promoting international economic and trade development. The attendees widely recognized that China’s solution was indispensable in addressing the global trust deficit.
Currently, the global economic recovery is fragile and sluggish and lacks momentum, the development gap is widening. The impact of geopolitical conflicts on global development is becoming increasingly evident.
More than 2,800 representatives from over 120 countries and regions gathered at the WEF Annual Meeting 2024 in Davos, Switzerland with a common goal of promoting global economic governance and helping the world economy overcome difficulties and sail towards a brighter future.
China has always been sharing the same goal with the WEF. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s important remarks on promoting economic globalization and upholding true multilateralism, as articulated at WEF platforms, hold profound practical significance in addressing global challenges.
While striving for high-quality development of its economy, China has always been sincerely committed to fostering an open world economy and has made tremendous efforts to improve global economic governance. The facts have proven that China is the most trustworthy partner.
China’s economy is steadily advancing, providing a sustained strong impetus for global economic development. Over the years, China’s contribution to world economic growth has stayed at around 30 percent. In 2023, China’s economy showed positive overall growth, with a year-on-year increase of 5.2 percent in GDP. It has been repeatedly emphasized by international media outlets that China’s economic growth rate was among the top in the world’s major economies.
According to the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report, driven by China’s economic recovery, the economic growth in East Asia and the Pacific region is projected to increase from 3.4 percent in 2022 to 5.1 percent in 2023.
China has established sound and solid fundamentals in terms of the industrial base, production factors, and innovation capacity. The conditions supporting high-quality development continue to gather and increase. The overall trend of long-term growth will not change.
Saadia Zahidi, managing director of the WEF, noted that China’s healthy economic development brings very positive spillover effects to other parts of the world.
China remains firmly committed to opening up and continues to create favorable conditions for the world to share in its opportunities. China is a major trading partner of over 140 countries and regions, with the overall tariff level cut to 7.3 percent, relatively on par with the developed members of the World Trade Organization.
Currently, global demand remains insufficient, and the market is the scarcest resource. The Chinese market, with its vast space and growing depth, will play an important role in boosting aggregate global demand.
China warmly welcomes foreign companies to continue investing in China and strives to create a first-class business environment that is market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized. China will steadily expand institutional opening up, continue to shorten the negative list for foreign investment, follow through on removing all restrictions on access for foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, and guarantee national treatment for foreign businesses.
According to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the return on FDI in the Chinese mainland had been around 9.1 percent over the past five years, while in Europe and the United States, it was around 3 percent. The facts have already proven and will continue to prove that choosing the Chinese market is not a risk but an opportunity.
China advocates for a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization and continues to contribute wisdom to improving global economic governance.
Economic globalization is an inherent requirement of developing productive forces, a natural result of scientific and technological advancement, a sure path to human progress, and more importantly, an irreversible trend of the times.
To promote economic globalization for the greater benefit of people around the world, China advocates for a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. A universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization means meeting the common needs of all countries, especially developing countries, properly addressing the development imbalances between and within countries resulting from the global allocation of resources.
It is important for the international community to resolutely oppose the attempt to roll back globalization and abuse the concept of security, oppose all forms of unilateralism and protectionism, firmly promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, overcome the structural problems hindering the healthy development of the world economy, and make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all.
In response to the prominent challenges facing the global economy, China advocates for strengthening the coordination of macroeconomic policies, enhancing the international division of labor and cooperation, promoting international scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation, fostering collaboration in green development, and strengthening North-South and South-South cooperation. These proposals provide practical and feasible solutions for rebuilding trust in the international community.
Only when all sides treat each other with sincerity and work in the same direction can there be a stronger foundation of trust and more fruits of cooperation? While focusing on effectively managing its affairs, China will uphold solidarity, cooperation, openness, and sharing, and work together with all parties to improve global economic governance, to promote the steady and sustainable recovery of the world economy.
