Urgency of institutional openness calls for actions

The annual Central Economic Work Conference that concluded earlier this week in Beijing has put forward many specific arrangements for opening-up.

The meeting called for relaxing market access for telecommunications, medical and other service industries, facilitating cross-border data flows and equal participation in government procurement, continuing to build a market-oriented, legal and international first-class business environment and opening-up effectively to make it more convenient for foreigners to do business, travel and study in China.

The central authorities emphasized the need to steadily expand institutional opening-up in rules, regulations, management and standards, as applying to join high-standard economic and trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement has raised higher requirements for the opening-up of the country's service industry. The country will proactively reform relevant rules, regulations, management and standards accordingly.

Governments at various levels have already drawn up top-level designs, yet there is an urgent need for these policies to be implemented in a timely manner as the Central Economic Work Conference has formulated more specific tasks and goals for the opening-up of the service sector.

Governments at various levels must increase their sense of urgency regarding expanding institutional openness. This urgency should stem from the country's commitment to institutional openness, as well as the urgent needs of the national economy to boost the market's confidence.

The government needs to effectively respond to market expectations with practical and visible opening-up measures.

The conference put forward specific requirements for certain opening-up policy measures related to the opening-up of the service sector. These are all specific issues that the market has focused on and cared about for a long time.

There is no doubt that the Chinese economy is at a critical and difficult moment of transformation and upgrading, and the market has strong expectations for further opening-up. Effectively expanding opening-up is in line with the trend of the economy, and will also help enhance market confidence and vitality, which are both badly needed now.