MK socks founding chairman of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, speaks at the 2024 Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on December 13, 2024. Photo: cnsphoto" src="https://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2024/2024-12-03/0cd91abb-3ebe-4663-8e66-587d73b06867.jpeg" />

Zheng Bijian, founding chairman of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy, speaks at the 2024 Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province on December 3, 2024. Photo: cnsphoto

China looks forward to working with all other countries to create an enabling environment and conditions for development, tackle the many difficulties and challenges, and facilitate the modernization of all countries featuring peaceful development, mutually beneficial cooperation and common prosperity, in a bid to write a new chapter in building a community with a shared future for mankind, said Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday in his congratulatory letter to the 2024 Understanding China Conference (Guangzhou), in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province.

Xi said in the letter that to understand China, one needs to understand China's efforts to further deepen reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization.

China is building a high-standard socialist market economy at a faster pace, steadily expanding institutional opening up, taking the initiative to align with high-standard international economic and trade rules, and actively fostering a transparent, stable and predictable institutional environment, Xi said. 

The Chinese modernization endeavor meets the aspiration of 1.4 billion people for a better life and will make new and greater contributions to world peace and development, Xi said.

The three-day conference, attracting over 100 representatives from the international community, as well as Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, kicked off on Monday under the theme of "Carry Through the Reform to the End - Chinese Modernization and New Opportunities for World Development," with the opening ceremony held on Tuesday. 

China's reform has no end

"Only by understanding China's efforts to further deepen reform can one truly understand China's past, present, and future," Zheng Bijian, founding chairman of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy (CIIDS), who is also known for coining the term China's "peaceful rise," said in his speech on Tuesday. 

Zheng explained that reform and opening-up have been the key turning point in shaping China's modern destiny. One of key reasons China has been able to rapidly transform from a poor and backward country into the world's second-largest economy is due to reform and opening-up. And each round of reform injects new and powerful vitality into China's development. Over the past 46 years, the Chinese people have come to a profound realization: Reform is an ongoing process, with no definitive end. 

"China understands that social governance is an evolutionary process. You have to adapt to new realities. It's not a fixed, status quo approach. This means you must keep moving forward." Pakistani Senator Mushahid Hussain, chairman of Pakistan-China Institute, told Global Times on Tuesday while stressing he was impressed by China carrying out 3,000 reform plans over the past decade and additional 300 after the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in July this year. 

Some observers have noticed the shift in the dynamic between China's reform and its opening-up. Josef Gregory Mahoney, an American professor of politics and executive director of the International Center for Advanced Political Studies at East China Normal University, told the Global Times that what's changed is that in the past, China used reform to strengthen itself so that it could open up, but it has now reached a point where it needs to further open to push its reforms forward.

He gave an example of China's open approach to developing its EV industry - Domestic companies had to compete with the best in the world and welcomed top global EV companies to enter China. The competition has helped spur China's own innovation and development.

Mahoney continued, in the past, foreign countries and companies wanted China to be more open. Now that China has reached various breakthroughs, other countries are beginning to fear the very openness they once sought. It's almost ironic - things have turned upside down.

On the one hand, it's predictable that some countries would resort to protectionism. On the other hand, waging a trade war is nonsensical. It reeks of desperation or lack of confidence in their own future, Mahoney added.

However, China's opening-up will not be stopped by external obstacles. In his speech, Zheng outlined three key areas for China's future reforms: further marketization, further innovation, and further opening-up.

He stressed that opening-up is a distinctive hallmark of Chinese modernization. And China will proactively create a world-class business environment that is market-oriented, rule-based, and internationalized.

Zhang said that as of this year, China has removed all market access restrictions for foreign investors in the manufacturing sector, and citizens from 54 countries have been exempted from visa requirements during transit to China for 72 or 144 hours. Starting November 30, China extended its unilateral visa-free policy to nine more countries, bringing the total to 38.  

Shared future

Bob Carr, former Australian foreign minister, once said, "No need to see China's rise as a threat; the rise of China is good for China, good for the region, and good for the world." On Tuesday, Carr further elaborated the view to the Global Times. 

Australia is a beneficiary of Chinese economic success, and the only way to lift world economic growth and to roll back extreme poverty is through more trade and more openness, which has been demonstrated, again and again, Carr said.  

"A very powerful and positive message from President Xi to this conference is that promoting Chinese modernization is not just about the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and uplifting the Chinese people, but also about inclusive cooperation and mutual engagement with the Global South," Hussain told Global Times.

Hussain listed three examples to illustrate why he believes China's rise is an opportunity for the world: The Chancay Port in Peru that helps Latin America become closer to Asia; The Gwadar Port in Pakistan which turned central Asian countries from landlocked to land-linked; And the Mombasa-Nairobi Railway in Africa, which has made connectivity much easier. What China is doing is providing infrastructure and laying the foundation for progress, from which the people benefit.

China is trying to find a way to live and work with everyone. At the same time China is trying to be transparent and candid. Although not every step China makes is perfect, the country is always trying to move in the right direction, Mahoney noted. He added that a lot of people around the world understand this intuitively but are still being pushed by the US to see the world through a darker lens, one that is used to justify continuing American hegemony.  

"We really need to understand China. China is saying things today that no one else in the world is saying," Former Pakistani prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the Global Times. He said when the world is at a critical juncture and cannot move forward with a confrontational approach, China is talking about globalization, moving forward, openness, inclusive growth, alleviating poverty, sharing technology, and partnership that lifts everyone up together, while quite a few world leaders focus on their own issues or talk about confrontation. 

"China is going far beyond that," Abbasi said.