Spotlight: China's opening up to benefit global economy, overseas experts say

Many overseas experts believe that China's pledge to further open itself up will not only benefit China's economic stabilization and growth, but also the global economy.

In the Government Work Report delivered to the National People's Congress on Saturday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged to step up China's opening up in 2016 and achieve win-win cooperation with the rest of the world.

The international community is glad to see a more open China, said Chun Kalim, a professor at South Korea's Hoseo University, adding that China's more open development strategies will have a positive impact on the world.

Chun also pointed out that China's present opening up is very different from that it experienced in the 1980s, when China just started its strenuous process of reform and opening up. Today's China, the South Korean professor said, is far more closely connected to the world, while the quality of the Chinese economy has also improved.

Wichai Kinchong Choi, senior vice president of Thailand's Kasikornbank, said he believes that China's financial industry, thanks to China's reform and opening up, has already achieved internationalization, contributing significantly to China's status as the world's second-largest economy.

As the Belt and Road Initiative is making headway, more and more Chinese enterprises now do business in other countries, Choi said, adding that China has already become a crucial participant in the global market.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt that links China with Europe through central and western Asia, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road connecting China with southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.

China's opening up strategies, which are balanced, eco-friendly, open and feature a sharing spirit, will be conducive to Southeast Asian countries as well as Asian-Pacific countries, the banker said.

Isolation makes a country become backward and opening up is in line with the tide, said Bambang Suryon, a veteran Indonesian political analyst. He suggested that China attach more importance to foreign investors from the high-tech industries in its process of opening up, which he believed will boost China's industrial upgrading.

Amanullah Khan, chairman of the Pakistan-China Business and Investment Promotion Committee, said China has become a reliable locomotive of global economic development, adding that the implementation of the 13th Five-Year Plan will offer many opportunities to the international community.

In the future, China will remain a leading force for global economic development, he said. And China's strategies of opening up and common development will help many countries to achieve economic growth and social development. Endi