People's Daily Micro Comments: No halftime break in China’s reform and opening-up

This year has been full of encouraging news about Shanghai’s efforts to deepen reform and opening-up: A three-year action plan for the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta kicked off high-quality, integrated development proposals on improving the city’s capacity and core competitiveness offer a roadmap for developing Shanghai into an excellent global city and the introduction of 100 measures aims at further expanding opening-up and developing a new open economy. All this shows the city’s courage and determination to pioneer the country’s reform and opening-up against the backdrop of changing global situation.

Shanghai has always maintained a sense of urgency for reform and opening-up. “A road without reform is a road to nowhere,” Deng Xiaoping once said in a thought-provoking speech. Now, even though living standards have improved, we should neither relax nor stand still in the face of obstacles. Forty years on, there must be no “halftime break” or “technical timeout” as China enters the deep-water zone in the cause of reform. Every step for new breakthroughs will be taken without a ready-made path to follow. There is no ready path to follow. China must, with an open mind and through institutional reforms, blaze its own "trail of excellence" by crossing the river by feeling for the stones.

Why is Shanghai so eager to improve its capacity and core competitiveness? Why is Shanghai willing to take the initiative to connect with surrounding small and medium-sized cities and develop the larger area? The answer is that this conforms to the global trend of city development. On the one hand, the rise of cities lies in the formation of their core competitiveness on the other hand, cities of global influence are not omnipotent. Urban agglomerations, based on convenient traffic networks, are becoming key driving forces of global economic growth, and the future of world economic competition will mainly be a competition of urban agglomerations. Shanghai can only compete with other top metropolises by standing at the forefront of metropolitan agglomerations.

Opportunities are to be fought for, not waited on. By conforming to the trend of social development and always being the pioneer of reform, Shanghai has demonstrated its sense of responsibility. Shanghai’s practice is the best commemoration for 40th anniversary of reform and opening-up.