By Long Guoqiang, Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC)

Under the new normal of moderate economic growth, China's opening-up is facing the following three challenges. Firstly, as the overall external environment for opening-up is still under post-crisis recovery and readjustment, overseas demand declines sharply and global overcapacity is expected to last for a longer period. Secondly, a new round of international trade rules is under reestablishment, and with the influence of WTO, new regional trade platform-based rules are being formed. Thirdly, as China's comparative advantage is under transition, the advantage of low labor cost is dwindling and enterprises have raised higher demand for highly-educated labor and innovation so as to sharpen their global competitive edge. While bringing new challenges, the new normal has also brought with it new opportunities. 1. The change in labor structure has improved the overall quality of the labor force, which is conducive to R&D development. 2. The rapidly expanding market in China has attracted a great amount of high quality capital and personnel. 3. A new round of global boom of infrastructure projects is bringing new opportunities to China's manufacturing companies. And 4. The expanding amount of outbound investment could facilitate the enhancement of industrial competitiveness through M&A the acquirement of new technology, intensified R&D capability, brand marketing and relevant international network. In face of by both opportunities and challenges, we should properly handle China's relationship with international community and make better use of external market to shore up China's economic development, which are the two goals of China's opening-up strategy. The strategic options for the realization of future targets include: 1. Vigorously foster a favorable global environment; 2. Put more efforts into improving the environment for investment with the opening up of service industry as the focus; 3. Vigorously propel outbound investment. Besides, in order to achieve new strategic goals, we need to construct a new economic system in an open manner and create favorable conditions for the implementation of new opening-up strategies.