China champions open trade with import expo

In a move to implement the country's pledge to expand economic opening-up to benefit the global trade system, the first China International Import Expo is to be held in Shanghai in November next year.

The expo is an important action by the Chinese government to further open up the domestic market and optimize the country's trade structure with the rest of the world. It is not only in line with China's own development needs but also the development needs of the world.

China is now the world's second-largest economy, its largest exporter and second-largest importer, and since its development has shifted from quantity to quality, it has a growing demand for high-quality commodities and services. By helping expand the Chinese market the expo will enable countries to get on the express train of its development.

Nearly $1.6 trillion of the country's total foreign trade volume last year, which reached $3.86 trillion, was imports, and President Xi Jinping forecast in his keynote address at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit in Lima, Peru, last year that the country's import volume will reach $8 trillion in the next five years.

Thus at a time when the global economy is still facing headwinds and a protectionist trend has emerged, the expo will give fresh impetus to the promoting and facilitating of open global trade and more inclusive globalization.

Protectionism still constitutes a major menace, even though the global trade situation picked up this year following its weak performance in recent years.

With the United States looking to itself, China has become the new champion of free trade and globalization, and the aim is to establish the expo as an international public good helping to promote the Belt and Road Initiative as part of the process of global economic development, and give new impetus to economic globalization and the establishing of open and mutually beneficial world trade.

President Xi has reiterated China's firm stance on economic globalization on many major international occasions, and the expo is the first manifestation of the vow he made at the recently concluded 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China that the country will adopt high-level trade and investment facilitation policies.

The expo is thus an important development for China's trade relations in the new era, and it will be a platform for different parties to discuss international trade and other major global economic issues and advance strategies to further promote economic globalization, an open world economy, and better balanced international development.