A more open China brings greater opportunities for global development

Openness is a strategic choice made by China based on its development needs and a practical measure to promote economic globalization and benefit people around the world. The fourth plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee outlined a series of important measures to "expand high-level opening up and foster new prospects of win-win cooperation." Leaders of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development have all noted that China's 15th Five-Year Plan will bring valuable certainty and strong momentum to the global economy. A more open China will join hands with global partners to follow the right path of open cooperation and write a new chapter of mutual benefit and win-win development.

A more open China means greater market opportunities. In 2025, China's imports reached 18.48 trillion yuan ($2.67 trillion), maintaining its position as the world's second-largest import market for the 17th consecutive year, with its share of global imports remaining at around 10 percent. China grants zero-tariff treatment to 100 percent of tariff lines for the least developed countries with which it has diplomatic relations and has extended this initiative to 53 African diplomatic partners. As the first developing country and major global economy to implement such a measure, China's initiative covers economies with a combined population of approximately 1.9 billion, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the global population. In 2025, China's imports from these economies exceeded $140 billion, effectively driving local economic growth and improving people's livelihoods. China will continue to expand imports of high-quality goods and services, balancing its own needs with the expectations of the world, fully leveraging both domestic and international markets and resources to create new spaces for win-win cooperation.

A more open China means more stable industrial and supply chains. While committed to its own development, China is deeply integrated into the global division of labor, making significant contributions to the prosperity and stability of global industrial and supply chains. China has continuously shortened its negative list for foreign investment access, achieving "zero restrictions" in the manufacturing sector. It has revised and expanded the Catalogue of Encouraged Foreign Investment Industries multiple times, with the 2025 edition containing 1,679 items, creating favorable conditions for foreign enterprises in China. In 2025, over 70,000 new foreign-invested enterprises were established nationwide, a year-on-year increase of 19.1 percent, with high-tech industries accounting for 32.3 percent of foreign investment, delivering substantial returns for foreign enterprises. At the same time, China supports its enterprises in going global at a high level, establishing overseas R&D centers and production bases to drive local economic development and industrial upgrading. In 2025, China's non-financial outward direct investment reached 1 trillion yuan ($144.6 billion), and the value of newly signed contracts for overseas contracted projects reached 2.1 trillion yuan ($303.8 billion). Moving forward, China will better coordinate "bringing in" and "going global," further create a market-oriented, law-based, and world-class business environment, guide the rational and orderly cross-border layout of industrial and supply chains, improve comprehensive overseas service systems, promote the integration of trade and investment, and inject more certainty into global industrial and supply chains.

A more open China paves the way for more open, inclusive, balanced, and win-win economic globalization. China continues to advance institutional opening-up, actively aligning with high-standard international economic and trade rules, expanding the opening of goods, services, capital, and labor markets in an orderly manner, and promoting the compatibility of rules, regulations, management, and standards across sectors. China's network of free trade agreements (FTAs) is expanding in scope, improving in quality, and growing in influence. It has signed 24 FTAs with 31 countries and regions and has promoted the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest FTA. In 2025, trade with FTA partners exceeded 20 trillion yuan ($2.9 trillion), accounting for 45 percent of China's total goods trade, serving as a model for global multilateral cooperation. As "pioneer zones" for institutional opening-up, 22 pilot free trade zones have cumulatively promoted 485 institutional innovations. Building on the great practice and development experience of Chinese modernization, China will continue to inject more Chinese wisdom into global rules for cross-border trade and investment through the steady expansion of institutional opening-up and advance the reform and improvement of the global governance system to keep pace with the times.

A more open China means deeper and more substantive progress in high-quality Belt and Road cooperation. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the world's largest and most far-reaching platform for international economic cooperation, with the broadest scope. China has signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with over 150 countries and more than 30 international organizations. Landmark projects such as the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway, the China-Laos Railway, and the Chancay Port have been completed. The China-Europe Railway Express has made over 120,000 trips cumulatively, the "Air Silk Road" connects 133 cities in 63 partner countries, and the Maritime Silk Road now includes 148 designated routes. People-centered projects such as Juncao technology, Luban Workshops, and the Brightness Action program have taken root. Guided by the vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, China will coordinate efforts to deepen infrastructure connectivity ("hard connectivity"), align rules and standards ("soft connectivity"), and foster closer bonds with people in partner countries ("heart connectivity"). It will advance both major landmark projects and "small but beautiful" livelihood projects, consolidate traditional areas of cooperation while steadily expanding into emerging ones, and promote the steady and sustained progress of high-quality Belt and Road cooperation.

Looking ahead, a more open China will deepen cooperation and join hands with countries around the world in broader areas, on a larger scale, at deeper levels, and to higher standards. Together, we will tackle global challenges such as climate change and sluggish economic recovery, counter uncertainties in the development environment with the certainty of high-level opening-up, and inject enduring and robust Chinese momentum into global development.