FM:China will never close its door

2019-09-25
Xinhua

NEW YORK — China will never close its door but only open up wider, said State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New York on Sept 24.

Opening-up is China's set state policy, and the country will never close its door, which will only open even wider, Wang said in a keynote speech at a dinner co-hosted by National Committee on US-China Relations, US-China Business Council, US Chamber of Commerce and Council on Foreign Relations.

Wang said China fulfilled as early as in 2010 the tariff reduction commitments the country made upon joining the World Trade Organization, and currently, China's average tariff stands at 7.5 percent, lower than that of most other developing countries.

He noted that China is accelerating its structural reform.

Earlier this month, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange announced that it will abolish the investment quota restrictions for the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors and Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors to boost financial reforms and opening-up.

In March, China's national legislature passed the foreign investment law, the landmark legislation for foreign investment, which will come into effect on Jan 1, 2020.

The law and its matching regulations will foster a fairer and more transparent market environment, Wang noted.

He said that the pre-establishment national treatment and negative list management are being rolled out across the board, and that negative lists for foreign investment market access have been shortened year by year.

Wang stressed that opening-up should go both ways. While China opens wider to the United States and the rest of the world, the country expects the United States to do the same to China and remove all unreasonable restrictions, he added.

He said China's efforts and achievements in reform and opening-up in the past few decades have attracted worldwide attention, and should not be deliberately ignored or erased.

The enormous benefits that China's development brought to the United States and other countries over the past few decades are indisputable and cannot be distorted or slandered by anyone, Wang added.