Courage to act powers China's reform, opening up amid challenges

Over the past four decades, China has been proactive in taking powerful and innovative action as the economic and social situation requires while implementing necessary and massive reforms despite external skepticism.

The plan China issued Sunday on implementing pilot reforms in Shenzhen, a city known as the trailblazer and paragon of China's reform and opening up, over the next five years is the latest manifestation of this attitude.

The plan granted the city greater autonomy in the reform of important areas and key links, such as carrying out market-oriented economic reform, improving market and legal environments for global businesses, building a high-level open economy, providing services to improve people's livelihood and bettering the ecological environment. It shows China's determination to break through the deep-rooted institutional barriers and the blockade of vested interests, and fulfill its promise of high-quality and sustainable development no matter how complex the development environment is.

China's courage to act to support economic globalization has opened a door of opportunities to the world. The country has been turning its commitment to opening up into actions, including but not limited to hosting the China International Fair for Trade in Services in September, unveiling a plan to pilot reforms in Shenzhen in October and preparing for the upcoming 3rd China International Import Expo in November.

The reform and opening up over the past four decades have proven the vitality and resilience of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Now the country is exploring a new round of opening up covering a wider range of areas and deeper institutional reforms to develop a new economic landscape.

China stresses top-level design while trying ideas at the primary level. This embodies China's unique system which takes various needs and situations into consideration and strikes a balance between short-term and long-term benefits.

To realize people's aspirations to live a better life, China is always keen to learn from other countries, including those in the West, but it will not copy the so-called Western model, nor will it export its own model. China's practice has demonstrated that developing countries' path to modernization must suit their own conditions.

Although a small group of politicians from the West have clamored for decoupling and attempted to incite ideological confrontations, data have shown that foreign companies remain optimistic on the Chinese market. According to a report recently released by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, 78.6 percent of the respondents did not intend to shift investment out of the country, up 5.1 percentage points from last year.

The world's confidence in the prospects of China's development is well-founded given the concrete opportunities created by China's opening-up policies and measures to optimize its business environment. These companies' responses in turn serve as important drivers of China's continued pursuit of win-win cooperation.

For the international community, acting in unity against unilateralism and protectionism and deepening globalization is the fundamental way out of the economic recession. China has already taken the step to "test the waters."