China Will Continue to Open Up

To achieve this goal, the market plays a decisive role, which in turn calls for a change in many old things. This is what is meant by “deepening reforms comprehensively.” The market economy has to operate under laws. Therefore the Chinese government advocates “rule by law comprehensively.” Lastly, to smoothly push reforms and rule by law, the ruling party has to “reinforce party discipline comprehensively.”

The four “comprehensivenesses” mentioned above constitute the current governing strategy of the CPC and the guarantee of China’s opening-up. We believe that every investor who wants to share the bonus of win-win cooperation with China does not want to leave after one transaction but expects to cooperate in the long term, and hopes this cooperation takes place under laws.

When going abroad, China has to learn to negotiate rules. Generally speaking, the Chinese market economy has still not been recognized 15 years after the country joined the WTO. It seems ludicrous, but this teaches us that China needs to learn how to negotiate rules with the international community.

In industrial areas, for example, Chinese steel-making capacity problems continuously met obstacles defined by the West, including anti-dumping investigations of many goods and the setbacks met by overseas RMB businesses. From this we can see that China, as an emerging country, is not yet used to international economic rules, and that developed countries seem to exclude China.

China will not flinch from rules. China will not start trade wars or currency wars. China will learn the rules and use them to negotiate peacefully with interested parties to change old rules and set new ones. When people worried that the U.S. would abandon the TPP and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), President Xi continued to appeal to countries for the establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) at the APEC Peru Summit last November, which demonstrated a positive attitude and firm action.

To conclude, the anti-globalization movement is gaining momentum and worries many people. Therefore, resistance to China’s flying against the wind is huge. But principles of flight tell us that with the right posture and method, a headwind can sometimes make you fly even higher. It will not be easy for China to continue to open up in an anti-globalization environment, but China is willing to explore ways to promote a new globalization mode with other countries, one that is more efficient, fair, and organized, and which needs the participation and management of emerging and developing countries like China.

KOU LIYAN is deputy research fellow at China Center for Contemporary World Studies.