Xi describes new start, new blueprint for global business leaders

President Xi Jinping on Saturday presented a grand vision to global business leaders, describing a new starting point for China's development and a new blueprint for global growth.

Addressing the opening ceremony of the Business of 20 (B20) summit in the eastern city of Hangzhou, Xi said China has the confidence and ability to maintain medium-high rate of growth as the country continues to deepen reform, pursues an innovation-driven development strategy, and opens up wider to the outside world.

After 38 years of reform and opening up, China has come to a new starting point to deepen reform across the board and foster new drivers of economic and social development, adapt its economy to a new normal and transform its growth model, and further integrate itself into the world and open itself wider to the world, according to Xi.

Calling the new normal a stage that China cannot bypass if the country is to upgrade its economy and make it better structured, Xi stressed the significance of reform, which he said is crucial to maintaining medium-high rate of growth under the new normal.

"China's goal of reform has been set and we will not deviate from it. China will take sure and firm steps in advancing reform and will not slow down its pace," Xi said.

Though China posted its slowest annual growth in a quarter of century last year, policy makers have refrained from taking any radical stimulus moves. Instead, they have resorted to supply-side reforms to optimize the economic structure, prune industrial overcapacity, slash costs, and boost efficiency.

Those efforts are painful and take time to deliver, but some positive results are beginning to take shape.

The economy is now more balanced, and driven more by consumption than investment. Consumption contributed 73.4 percent to China's economic growth in the first half of 2016, up 13.2 percentage points from the same period last year.

China will work with other parties to ensure that the G20 summit comes up with an integrated prescription to address both the symptoms and root causes so that the world economy could move along a path of strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth, Xi said.

All parties at the summit should work to build an innovative and open world economy to generate new drivers of growth and expand the scope of development, he said.

The world economy should become interconnected and inclusive to forge interactive synergy and strengthen the foundation for win-win outcomes, Xi said.

Against the backdrop of lackluster global economic growth, "we need to innovate our macroeconomic policies and effectively combine fiscal and monetary policies with structural reform policies," Xi said.

With members representing more than 85 percent of global economic output and two-thirds of the world's population, G20 has an undeniable influence on managing the global economy.

After the global financial crisis, the G20 has played an important role to bring together world leaders in crisis response.

Since China took the G20 chair last year, the world has pinned hopes on China and other major economies drawing a road-map to reboot global economic growth.

One of the goals of China's G20 presidency is to enable the G20 to transform from a crisis response mechanism focusing on short-term policies to one of long-term governance that shapes medium- to long-term policies, and solidify its role as the premier forum for international economic governance, Xi said on the eve of the G20 summit. Endi