Chinese premier pledges further opening up amid rising global uncertainties

BEIJING -- Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Sunday pledged to unswervingly advance opening up and cooperation amid rising global instability and uncertainty.

Li made the remarks in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the China Development Forum 2025 in Beijing.

China will continue to welcome enterprises from around the world with open arms, further expand market access, actively address the concerns of businesses, and facilitate the deeper integration of foreign-funded enterprises into the Chinese market, he said.

The increasing global economic fragmentation, coupled with rising instability and uncertainty in today's world, underscores the growing need for countries to open their markets and for enterprises to share resources, in order to address challenges and pursue common prosperity, the premier said.

He said China will safeguard free trade, and contribute to the smooth and stable operation of global industrial and supply chains.

China has set its full-year growth target at around 5 percent for 2025. Li said the decision reflects both China's profound understanding of its fundamental economic conditions and strong confidence in its governance capacity and future development potential, and pledged efforts to strengthen policy support while stimulating market forces in order to achieve the target.

The country will implement more proactive and impactful macro policies, further strengthen counter-cyclical adjustments, and introduce new incremental policies when necessary to provide strong support for the sustained improvement and stable operation of the economy, Li said.

The country will continue to advance the building of a unified national market and unclog bottlenecks in economic circulation to create a better development environment for various business entities, he added.

Li pointed out that around this year's Spring Festival, the Chinese economy has seen a surge of phenomenal highlights, with new growth drivers gaining strength across various sectors, which will inject sustained and robust momentum into the economy.

The China Development Forum 2025 is scheduled from March 23 to 24. The theme of this year's forum is "Unleashing Development Momentum for Stable Growth of Global Economy."

Around 720 people, including entrepreneurs, government officials, experts and representatives from international organizations from home and abroad attended the opening ceremony of the forum, hosted by the Development Research Center of the State Council.