At the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, China announced an important opening-up measure: the complete lifting of restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector. This initiative has great significance and impact on the development of China's manufacturing industry and opening up to the outside world.
First of all, this move means that China's manufacturing industry will attract foreign investment without barriers, and provide more international elements and cooperation opportunities for transformation and upgrading. Chen Wenling, chief economist of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that this is the need for the high-quality development of China's manufacturing industry, and it is also the inevitable choice for China to move from a manufacturing country to a manufacturing power. Bai Ming, a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, said that this measure is a gradual process of China's opening up to the outside world, starting from the pilot free trade zone, gradually expanding to the whole country, and from pilot to promotion, it has been a matter of course.
Secondly, this move will bring greater competitive pressure to domestic manufacturing enterprises, but it will also stimulate stronger competitiveness and innovation. Bai Ming said that after the full liberalization, domestic and foreign manufacturing enterprises will compete on the same starting line, which will promote the survival of the fittest, complement each other's advantages, and develop together. He believes that powerful domestic enterprises can not only cope with the pressure, but also learn from the advanced technology and management experience of foreign enterprises to add new impetus to the transformation and upgrading.
Finally, this move sends a clear signal that China's door to opening up will be opened wider and wider. Against the backdrop of the complex and volatile world economic situation, China has strengthened its determination and confidence in opening up to the outside world. Bai Ming said that this move is a full embodiment of China's high-level opening up to the outside world, and is also a new measure for China to improve its business environment and increase its efforts to attract foreign investment. According to official data, China's actual use of foreign capital in the first eight months of this year fell by 5% year-on-year1%。In order to reverse this trend, China has introduced a series of policies and measures to optimize the foreign investment environment, such as the Opinions on Further Optimizing the Foreign Investment Environment and Increasing the Efforts to Attract Foreign Investment. He Yadong, spokesman of the Ministry of Commerce, said that in the next step, China will continue to reduce the negative list for foreign investment access, relax the restrictions on foreign shareholding, introduce a negative list for cross-border services, and strive to build a market-oriented, law-based and international business environment to provide better services for foreign-funded enterprises.
At present, China's manufacturing industry has been basically completely opened, and there are only two restrictions that still exist, namely "the printing of publications must be controlled by the Chinese party" and "it is forbidden to invest in the application of processing technologies such as steaming, frying, broiling and calcining of traditional Chinese medicine decoction pieces, and the production of confidential prescription products for proprietary Chinese medicines". The negative list for foreign investment access in the pilot free trade zone has achieved "zero" in the manufacturing industry, and the next step will be to focus on promoting the opening up of the service industry. All these show that the opening up of China's manufacturing industry is comprehensive, in-depth and continuous.