Li Wei, Development Research Center of the State Council

Holding the first "China-UK Reform and Innovation Forum" during the visit of China's President Xi Jinping, to UK with his grand delegation is of key importance. Reform and innovation is not only the major concern shared by China and UK, but also a need required by the reality of sustained global growth. The reasons are as follows. 1. Reform and innovation are the core driver for sustained development of human society. Positive experience and negative lessons in the development of various countries indicate that in face of the new environment and challenges, the only way to sustained growth is taking initiative to make reform and innovation. Currently, global development is at an important historic moment. On the one hand, under the impact of international financial crisis, major economies of the world have taken various measures to promote economic growth, but so far the prospects for global economic growth have not become bright. On the other hand, with further modernization of transport and communications technologies, economic and social connections between nations are getting closer and common concerns are increasing. Thus each country should break through the bottlenecks of development via technological innovation and meantime adapt to the new environment through institutional reform. 2. Reform and innovation are the eternal subject of China's development. China upholds the notion that "science and technology constitute a primary productive force", pays attention to learning advanced international technologies, and focuses on shore up the foundations for innovation, which have prominently intensified the leverage role of innovation in promoting development. China's past development was based on reform and innovation, which will be indispensable for its future development. During the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan period, our goal is to build China into a moderately prosperous society in all aspects. Consequently we should keep economic growth at a comparatively rapid speed, and promote social fairness and justice, which all call for reform and innovation. 3. Efforts should be made to enhance China-UK collaboration and push ahead with reform and innovation so as to make further contribution for sustained global development. Although China has exerted huge efforts in the field of reform and innovation and accumulated some experience, yet as a later developer, it still needs to learn from developed countries including UK. China and UK enjoy a wide range of opportunities for cooperation in the field of reform and innovation and we could promote reform and innovation for common progress through drawing on each other's experience.