As the sixth China International Import Expo is going to kick off, the 2023 International Forum on Imports was successfully held on Nov. 4 at East China University of Science and Technology, which was attended by Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Director General of the Center of International Trade from UN, Hong Xiaodong, former Director of China Society for World Trade Organization Studies and Division of International Trade Organizations of the Ministry of Commerce, Robert Koopman, former Chief Economist of WTO. The forum was also presented by Yu Miaojie, a deputy to the National People’s Congress, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Committee and President of Liaoning University as well as over 300 experts from international organizations, Chinese governmental departments, academic and business communities on site and more than 200,000 people watched the live broadcast online. Du Huifang, Secretary of the CPC Committee of ECUST delivered a speech at the forum and Yan Haifeng, member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Committee of ECUST hosted the opening ceremony.

Speech by Du Huifang

Keynote speeches

        President Yu said in his speech that the international community is now moving into a critical stage while China is also challenged by strenuous domestic reform tasks. Evolving into a new phase featuring high quality development, China should strive to forge a new development pattern where domestic market plays a leading role while letting domestic and foreign markets boost each other, international circulation remaining critical in particular, as he proposed. He added that the focus of economic globalization lies in trade at a global scale, which is mainly measured by two indicators: regionalization in production and polygonization in trade. From a factual perspective, even if trade products now faces more tariff barriers, the above-mentioned two features in trade remain unchanged.

With regard to the current international economic and trade pattern, President Yu believes that China’s opening up facilitates the global process, which is featured by a triangular balance of power, namely the USA-led NAFTA, the Germany-led EU region and China-led RCEP region. 

“The triangular balance has no implication that each is isolated from on another and yet they are seeking even closer two-point cooperation ” , said President Yu. NAFTA and the EU region are in a process of negotiating the TTIP while the CAI signed between China and the EU region is making steady progress. Moreover, China is seeking to be a member of CPTPP, which falls into the category of NAFTA.

In such context, to build a comprehensive and new opening pattern in China that is more omni-directional, multilevel and wide-ranging, he offered the six following proposals:

First, diversity its export destinations. Faced with an internationally shifting landscape, the export-oriented enterprises in China should not only focus on mature markets in Europe and America, but take an active approach to explore the markets in emerging economies, such as the BRIC countries and the Central Asia. China’s enterprises should also provide tailored products to the export destinations based on their income level and realities so as to satisfy local needs and yet enhance competitiveness.

Second, enlarge its import scale. In formulating macro policies, China should continue to expand export while lower tariff in a way to reduce trade cost. By doing so, more international products will have the access to Chinese markets to satisfy the sense of happiness and sense of gain of domestic consumers. Importing intermediate products would be beneficial for enterprises to lower cost and increase sustainable incomes. Imported final products, though would lead to competition in the short run, yet facilitate productivity in industries and bring good to enterprises from long-term perspective. 

Third, seek uniqueness in its service trade. Having been ranked first in terms of global commodity trade, China still need to develop further its service trade by expanding total volume, adjusting structure and offering unique features. According to the released Report on China’s Development of Trade in Services 2022, a certain gap still exists between the figure on China’s total volume of trade in services and that of the USA. China’s main industries enjoy huge deficit in trade services, education being one of the industries with the biggest deficit. As China opens wider to the outside world, the rich tourist resources in China should have attracted more international visitors. Yet China currently fails to provide enough soft facilities and commendable services. In addition, competitive advantages should be identified to display distinctive features as China conducts trade service activities, the TCM industry being a direction we can strive to.

Fourth, deepen its foreign direct investment. China’ s FDI has always been at the forefront of the world and much progress has already been made under the “Go Global” strategy. Having said that, Chinese enterprises really aim to do is to “go deep” and “go higher”. “Go deep” means to establish a sincere relationship with local people in foreign countries that connects them and bear more social responsibilities while “go higher” refers to giving priority to product quality and working to enhance technological advancement.

Fifth, achieve regional economic and trade cooperation at different levels. The progress of China’s accession to CPTPP finds it challenging to achieve due to the reality of its large member counties and complicated situations. From factor opening to institutional opening, the construction of building a free trade area that connects Japan, South Korea and China matters equally. As the three countries are close to each other in geography and enjoy respective strengths, beefing up cooperation in economy and trade is conductive to achieving regional economic integration and reinforcing regional cooperation in industrial chains.

Sixth, conduct differentiated strategies under the Belt and Road Initiative. The co-construction of the BRI is moving forward into its second decade. In the future, the focus of the Land Silk Road should be given to strengthening economic and trade cooperation with the Far East region of Russia. With respect to the Maritime Silk Road, priorities should be given to the construction of China-Japan-Korea FTA on the one hand and launching trade activities with the Middle East, the West Asia and the North Africa on the other, building FTAs with Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt in particular. With these efforts, the Northeast Sea-land Corridor will come into being to reshape China’s strategic map of opening to the outside world.

In the video speech delivered by Director General Pamela Coke-Hamilton, she holds a positive attitude to China’s role in promoting global trade and extended thanks to student volunteers from ECUST who attended the forum. Former Director Hong Xiaodong noted that as China works to be member of DEPA and makes solid efforts in launching digital cooperation under the BRI, it is confident to believe that China will have an increasingly important role to play. In the video speech themed ‘WTO’s Value under the Background of Geo-economic Differentiation’, former Chief Economist Robert Koopman emphasized that multilateral cooperation has a crucial role to play in responding to an array of economic and social challenges and particularly greatly galvanizes economic growth. Che Yi, a distinguished researcher from ECUST also made a keynote speech themed ‘Entity List and Enterprise Innovation’.