The 7th China International Import Expo (CIIE) was held in Shanghai from November 5th to 10th. During the Expo, the Hongqiao Economic Forum held a sub-forum titled “Pudong and the world’s high level of institutional liberalization, leading new opportunities for development”. On the topic of “How Pudong can lead new development opportunities”, Professor SHI Jianxun from School of Economics and Management, Tongji University was a guest on CCTV-4 “China News” special program “Import Expo Observation”, discussing how Shanghai Pudong and even the whole country can steadily expand the opening up of the system and enhance the country’s innovation and competitiveness. national innovation and competitiveness. The following is the content of the interview.

Q1: Pudong is the window of China’s reform and opening up, as well as a hot spot for China to showcase itself to the outside world and attract investment, how do you observe the leading role played by Pudong in this regard?

SHI Jianxun: Pudong is the leading area for promoting Chinese-style modernization, with Yangshan Port, Zhangjiang, Lujiazui and other core areas for the construction of the “five centers”, and has always assumed the role of a pioneer in China’s reform and opening-up cause. In the new starting point of reform and opening up, especially in steadily improving the level of opening up, systematic opening up, Pudong is still to be the first to try the vanguard. Pudong should make full use of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Lingang new area and other open high ground, the most advanced, the most common, the highest standards to the international standard to continue to carry out systematic reforms, to further optimize the business environment, lower the threshold of investment, to attract the world’s high-end factors of production in the Pudong agglomeration for the reform and opening up of the whole country to provide valuable experience for the early and pilot implementation of the reform and opening up of the whole country, this is the Pudong obligatory duty, and the future development of the important task of Pudong. This is a responsibility that Pudong is duty-bound to fulfill and an important task for its future development.

Q2: Steadily expanding system-oriented opening up is an important strategic direction for China’s opening up in the new period and under the new situation. How can we focus on development in this area?

SHI Jianxun: Standing on a new historical starting point, we need to implement a new reform and opening-up. Today’s reform and opening-up has undergone significant changes in the environment compared with the past. Domestically, the task of development has become more difficult, and the expectations of the people are higher. In terms of the external development environment, conservatism, protectionism and isolationism are prevalent in the Western countries represented by the United States, and the development of the world economy is full of uncertainties. In this uncertain international environment, we can only continue to deepen reform and opening up, open the door wider and wider, raise the level of opening up higher and higher, and open up the quality of the system more and more, so as to cope with the uncertainty of the world economic development with our certainty.

I believe that we can advance in the following three points:

First, the focus is to give full play to the role of the open highland system-type innovation test, exploration lead and demonstration. Such as the Shanghai Free Trade Zone Lingang new area, Hainan Free Trade Port, as well as the country’s nearly 30 free trade zones, the early and pilot implementation of some of the priority systems in these areas. In the meantime, the relationship between top-level design and crossing the river by feeling the stones should be properly handled. Institutional liberalization requires exploration, experimentation and pressure testing, and the open highlands are the areas where experiments are carried out, with one being promoted at a mature stage, and then extended to the whole country after successful experiments.

Second, we must continue to optimize the business environment. Pudong and Shanghai have done a lot of work in optimizing the business environment, and the evaluation indexes in the international are constantly improving, and will continue to strengthen this aspect of work in the future. The business environment can only be better, not the best. A better business environment comes from systematic liberalization, reform and improvement, which will enable our business environment to be better aligned with the international community, attract global high-quality elements to gather in Shanghai and the whole country, and closely integrate with our new quality productivity elements to enhance our innovation capability and competitiveness.

Thirdly, I think it is still necessary to actively participate in international economic cooperation and international economic governance. On the one hand, we should actively promote the reform of the World Trade Organization and the continuous improvement of the diversified trade system. We need to gradually change from a firm supporter to a rule maker and participant; on the other hand, we need to strengthen our ability and level of providing public goods for public development to the international community, like the Fair, which is an open and public platform that we have provided to the world, on which we have realized buying and selling globally. Another example is the China International Consumer Goods Fair, the Global Digital Trade Expo, the Canton Fair, the Belt and Road Initiative, and so on, all of which are global public goods for economic development provided by China to the world. In the future, we will deepen our participation in global public governance, raise the level of opening up to the outside world, and convey to the world our determination and signals of China’s opening up, so as to make positive contributions to the development of the world economy.