China to create more development opportunities for the world: FM

MOSCOW-- China will create more development opportunities for the world, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Friday.

Wang made the remarks at a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers' meeting in Moscow.

Wang noted that China in the first half of the year has achieved significant outcomes in the COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control, and experienced steady economic and social recovery.

China in particularly recorded 3.2 percent growth year-on-year in the second quarter, making it the first major economy that has returned to growth across the world, which highlighted the great resilience and vitality of the Chinese economy, Wang said.

Noting that the Chinese economy has seen sustained growth since the third quarter, he said China is confident and capable to achieve the established economic and social development goals.

The Chinese state councilor stressed that China had put forward to establish a new development pattern in which domestic and foreign markets can boost each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay.

This new pattern, he said, is both an inevitable choice as China's economic and social development run into a new stage and an important measure for China to deal with the new changes in the world economy.

With a population of 1.4 billion people and a middle income group of over 400 million people, China is now developing into the largest market in the world, he said, noting that it is an important feature for a major country to drive its economic growth mainly on domestic demand.

As the Chinese market grows bigger and more mature, immeasurable purchasing power will be created, which will provide wider markets both for China and the world, Wang added.

The new development pattern also requires China to build a more open economic structure, which will bring about more development opportunities to the world, the senior Chinese official said.

Quoting the three proposals put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2020 China International Fair of Trade in Services, which include jointly fostering an open and inclusive environment for cooperation, working together to invigorate momentum for cooperation driven by innovation and making joint efforts to break new ground in win-win cooperation, Wang said China has shown its willingness to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results with countries across the world.

For the bilateral relations, the Chinese state councilor said that China and Russia are natural partners of cooperation, complementing each other's advantages, and the two countries have established complete and dynamic mechanisms in economic cooperation.

Despite the disturbance of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two sides have never stopped cooperation, Wang said, adding that the resumption of work and production in various fields is accelerated and the cooperation projects of the Year of Scientific and Technological Innovation from 2020 to 2021 have been phasedly launched.

Wang expects that the further advance of the Sino-Russian practical cooperation will bring about more tangible benefits to the two countries and their peoples.