WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- American companies will have better prospects to grow their operation in China as the country moves to build up resilience against external shocks while sharing its opportunities for development with the rest of the world, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai has said.

"Now we are preparing for the 14th Five-Year Plan, which will start next year. The emphasis is very clear. As you said, we would like to have this new development pattern with both the internal and external cycles reinforcing each other and with the internal one as the mainstay," said Cui in a recent interview with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson during the podcast program "Straight Talk with Hank Paulson."

"But this does not mean we will close our doors. It does not mean we will have a closed internal loop. Actually, we will open up even wider in the process," he said. "We will open our door even wider because our real aim is to give full play to the potential of the domestic market, to make the domestic market function more effectively and much better, so that the two cycles could really reinforce each other."

The ambassador expressed his hope that many foreign companies, including American ones, which are operating in China, will "seize the great opportunities."

"They are already part of this domestic cycle or domestic market. With great emphasis on the internal market forces, they will have better prospects to develop, to grow their operation in China. At the same time, they are the natural link between the internal cycle and the external cycle. So that would mean great opportunity for them," he said.