Recently, Tongji SEM’s distinguished professor Liu Xinghua delivered a speech titled How to Advance Higher-standard Opening-up Today at the seminar “Understand China and Chinese Modernization – The Great Practice of Promoting Global Modernization.” The following are the points of his speech.

With opening-up proclaimed as a fundamental national policy since the Third Plenary Session of the 11^th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in December 1978, China has been actively integrating into the global economy by expanding its opening-up over the 45 years. China’s remarkable achievements in economic development can be attributed, in large part, to its 2001 accession to the global multilateral trading system, of which the World Trade Organization served as the cornerstone. This system greatly facilitated the free flow and optimal allocation of factor resources such as commodities, services, capital, talents, and technologies between the domestic and international markets. China, a significant source of power and an essential stabilizer of the global economy, has consistently contributed more than 30% to the expansion of the world economy for more than a decade. In these almost fifty years of opening up, China has hurried to “catch up with the times” and embarked on a path of industrialization and modernization. Looking ahead, China needs to advance higher-standard opening-up in order to properly address various difficulties, risks, challenges, and tests, create a new development pattern, achieve high-quality development, advance Chinese modernization, and contribute more to global peace, development, and modernization.

Closure, turmoil, conflict, and war are the great enemies of human society, as evidenced by the history of the modern world. In contrast, openness, cooperation, innovation, and peace are the enduring solutions to national prosperity, the main forces behind the development of the global economy and society, crucial pillars supporting the advancement of human civilization, and the only ways for countries to achieve modernization and build a global community with a shared future for all people. With the globe, the times, and history evolving in ways never seen before, it is critical for countries to recognize global trends, follow the current wave, make the right choices, and take preventative measures.

In this context, China needs to “understand the world”, and the world needs to “understand China”. The key to “understanding China” lies in understanding Chinese modernization. Only an open China can become a modernized China, therefore, to achieve Chinese modernization, China must implement a more proactive opening-up strategy, develop new systems for a high-level open economy, and advance higher-standard opening-up.

1. Advancing higher-standard opening-up first requires full emancipation of the ideological understanding and genuine openness of the thinking and vision.

2. Advancing higher-standard opening-up requires proactive implementation of a broader agenda of market opening.

3. Advancing higher-standard opening-up requires proactive implementation of market opening across more areas.

4. Advancing higher-standard opening-up requires gradual expansion of institutional opening-up in greater depth.

5. Advancing higher-standard opening-up requires the establishment of systems and mechanisms for transparent collaboration in sci-tech innovation in line with global trends.

6. Higher-standard opening-up means that China should make new contributions to the world’s peaceful development and modernization through its high-quality development and Chinese modernization.

In a word, the core meanings and key paths of China’s higher-standard opening-up include full emancipation of the ideological framework and genuine openness of the thinking and vision, a broader agenda of market opening across more areas, institutional opening-up in greater depth, more innovative open cooperation in science and technology, and all-round opening-up that creates new contributions for the world’s peaceful development and modernization. Certainly, it is necessary to prevent various risks, particularly financial risks, maintain economic security, and guarantee the reliability and security of food, energy, and industrial and supply chains in the process of higher-standard opening-up, which is the other side of the same “coin”. Similar to an automobile in motion, it requires a robust power supply in addition to appropriate transmission, braking, and anti-skid systems; it also must be steered in the proper direction to continue traveling forward. To build these systems and move in the right direction, the modernization of the national governance system and capacity is required amid higher-standard opening-up.