Advisers highlight need for further opening-up

More efforts are needed to deepen China's opening-up drive and upgrade its industrial system via innovation over the next five years, national political advisers said during a meeting concluded on Thursday.

China should deepen its opening-up on a larger scale and in more fields to gain an edge in international cooperation and competition, they said during a meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

The advisers stressed on the need for the country to optimize its business environment, promote high-quality development of the Belt and Road Initiative, safeguard multilateral trading regimes, and help build an international economic governance system that is fair and equitable.

The proposed deeper opening-up efforts would be part of the nation's new "dual-circulation" development pattern, which considers the domestic market as mainstay while domestic and foreign markets can be complementary to each other.

Discussions during the meeting focused largely on the formulation of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), which will outline China's economic and social development goals and strategies for the next five years.

Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the 13th CPPCC National Committee, said political advisers actively made suggestions about the development blueprint during the meeting.

Wang urged political advisers to play a bigger role in the drafting and formulation of the 14th Five-Year Plan.

The CPPCC should leverage the advantage of being intelligence-intensive, strengthen the study over major strategic projects, and propose more forward-looking, targeted suggestions, Wang said, adding that political advisers should also strengthen their ability to transform their suggestions into feasible policy choices.

Stressing the need to uphold the innovation-driven development strategy, political advisers called for efforts to upgrade traditional industries, foster cutting-edge technology industries and seek development opportunities through technological innovation.

Zhang Lianqi, a member of the Standing Committee of the 13th CPPCC National Committee, stressed on the need for a market-oriented, rule-based and institutionalized development environment for the manufacturing sector, featuring long-term stability and predictability.

Addressing the weak links and reinforcing the advantages of the manufacturing sector are crucial part of the nation's efforts to unleash the potential of its domestic market of super-large scale, Zhang told China Daily on the sidelines of the meeting.

China should get a lower limit for the manufacturing output-to-GDP ratio in the new five-year plan, in line with international practices like in Germany, as well as build a fiscal and tax policy system that is more friendly toward high-quality development of the manufacturing sector, he said.

To leverage the role of the country's vast domestic market in powering growth, China should also step up efforts to improve the services in education, medical care, elderly care and other sectors that have a direct bearing on people's livelihood but have been less developed, Zhang said.

The political advisers also made suggestions over the new five-year plan in fields like deepening supply-side structural reform, ensuring balanced and high-quality compulsory education and strengthening ecological conservation.

Xinhua contributed to this story.