(Source: "Global Times" 2025-06-18)
China’s success largely comes from reform and opening up. As a developing country, opening up has enabled China to fully share the resources and markets of the world economy and successfully achieve rapid development. At the same time, China has also contributed to the development of the world by continuing to expand its opening up.
Especially in recent years, China's economic growth rate ranks among the top in the world among major economies, accounting for about 18% of the global economy, and has maintained a contribution rate of about 30% to world economic growth. As China's economy grows in size and improves in quality, China has stronger capabilities and greater willingness to inject Chinese power into world development through various channels and drive sustained and healthy growth of the world economy.
High-quality supply brings prosperity and opportunities to the world
China continues to promote high-level opening up to the outside world and drives world economic growth from both supply and demand directions. From the supply side, China, as a major manufacturing country, provides the world with high-quality, reasonably priced consumer goods, intermediate goods and capital goods, which not only greatly improves the welfare of consumers in various countries, but also provides strong support for the smooth operation of supply chains in various countries and the healthy development of the manufacturing industry. China has made use of its comparative advantages in labor, land, institutions and other resources to provide the world with a large number of cheap goods, becoming a veritable "world factory" and greatly reducing world supply prices and correspondingly lowering the inflation rate in many countries.
China has become the largest producer of many industrial products. Whether it is raw materials, consumer goods or capital goods, China has huge scale advantages, cost advantages, and increasingly enhanced quality and technical capabilities. Currently, my country ranks first in the world in production of more than 100 consumer goods. In 2023, the production of mobile phones, microcomputers, color TVs, industrial robots and other products will be 1.57 billion units, 330 million units, 190 million units, and 430,000 units respectively, all ranking first in the world. Technologies such as underwater robots and drones, as well as high-end medical imaging equipment such as magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound imaging, are also at the leading international level. Since 2009, my country has been the largest exporter of goods in the world for many consecutive years, and has been the world's largest manufacturing country for 15 consecutive years. The output of more than 40% of its major industrial products ranks first in the world.
The rapid development of China's manufacturing industry stems from China's multiple comparative advantages, including a high-quality workforce, a complete infrastructure network, forward-looking government industrial planning, and a large domestic market. Looking around the world, the only country that possesses these advantages is China. But what needs to be pointed out in particular is that China cannot become the engine of global manufacturing without the joint participation of the world. China is one of the developing countries with the highest degree of openness to foreign investment. As of the end of 2024, foreign investors have invested and established more than 1.239 million enterprises in China, with actual use of foreign capital of 20.6 trillion yuan. Attracting foreign investment provides important support for building a modern industrial system. Foreign investment in China has covered 20 industry categories and 115 major industry categories; in the manufacturing field, there are foreign investments in 31 major categories and 548 sub-categories. As the only country with all industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification, foreign investment has played a decisive role in the development of China's manufacturing industry. In turn, China is also working hard to expand the participation and win-win situation of foreign investment in China's development dividends. The negative list for foreign investment access has been reduced from the earliest 190 items to the current 29 items in the national version and the 27 items in the free w88 pilot zone. The manufacturing sector has been "cleared". It can be said that this process itself is a process of mutual achievement, mutual benefit and win-win, and China and the world are not a zero-sum game, where you lose and I win.
Huge demand is an important market for global production capacity
From the demand side, as of the first three quarters of 2024, China's imports contributed more than 1/5 to global import growth. It has become the largest trading partner of 83 countries and regions in the world, an increase of 4 from 2023, and it is also the main trading partner of more than 150 countries and regions. As the engine of global manufacturing, China has extremely huge demand for various commodities, agricultural products and raw materials. China is the largest importer of oil, natural gas, iron ore, grain and other products, and accordingly provides a huge market for producing countries of related products. Countries rich in natural resources such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Australia, and the United States have benefited greatly from this. At the same time, as the core node of the global industrial and supply chains, China needs a large amount of capital goods and parts to support the smooth operation of the supply chain. Although China already has a very complete industrial system, it is impossible and unnecessary for China to cover everything. China still needs to cooperate closely with other countries and support each other to complete the production of products in the most efficient way. For example, high-end CNC machine tools, photolithography machines, vacuum evaporation machines, chips, etc. are still important imported commodities to China. Taking chips as an example, customs data shows that China will import a total of 549.2 billion chips in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 14.51%, while the import value will reach US$385.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 10.36%. As long as there is stable and reliable supply, China is the largest market for related products.
With the improvement of the living standards of the Chinese people, the import of consumer goods, including the import of services, has also become an important part of the country's imports. China's consumer goods imports will exceed 18 trillion yuan in 2024, fully reflecting the enthusiasm of Chinese consumers for pursuing diversified consumption experiences. The Chinese government also actively encourages the expansion of imports of consumer goods and has specially established the world's only import expo for this purpose. This not only demonstrates China's determination to expand opening up, but also reflects the Chinese government's concern for people's lives. In 2024, the outbound tourism market for Chinese citizens will reach 146 million, close to the level of 2019; travel revenue and expenditure will be US$290.4 billion, an increase of 32% from 2023, which is basically the same as in 2019 (US$290.5 billion). Among them, travel expenditure was US$250.6 billion, an increase of 29%, indicating that residents’ willingness to travel across borders is steadily recovering. Although there is still a gap between the peak of US$277 billion created in 2018, China has once again become the country with the highest international tourism consumption, and the impact of the epidemic is gradually dissipating.
The flow of key factors drives the common development of the “Global South”
In terms of capital and technological factors, China's ultra-large-scale market provides huge possibilities for capital appreciation and technological innovation. At the same time, China has grown into a key exporter of capital and technology, actively participating in the industrialization and economic construction processes of various countries.
In recent years, Chinese companies have launched a boom in going overseas, extending China’s supply chain industry chain to the world. With global foreign direct investment falling by 2% and the scale of cross-border mergers and acquisitions being the lowest in the past decade, China's foreign direct investment flows in 2023 were US$177.29 billion, accounting for 11.4% of the global share, ranking among the top three in the world for 12 consecutive years, with an investment stock of US$2.96 trillion, ranking among the top three in the world for seven consecutive years. Countries in the "Global South" have become important destinations for investment by Chinese companies, which provides huge opportunities for relevant countries to undertake the transfer of global industrial chains and achieve their own industrialization and economic development.
In 2023, nearly 80% of China's foreign direct investment went to Asia, of which investment in ASEAN was US$25.12 billion, an increase of 34.7%; investment in Africa was US$3.96 billion, 2.2 times the previous year. In 2023, direct investment in countries jointly building the “Belt and Road” was US$40.71 billion, an increase of 31.5% over the previous year, accounting for 23% of the flow that year. Countries in the "Global South" in Asia, Africa and Latin America have long suffered from capital scarcity and technological backwardness, and have been fixed at the bottom of the value chain by developed countries. China's investment not only brings abundant capital, but also China's most vivid industrialization experience and the most adapted manufacturing technology to local conditions, quickly activating the economic and industrial development of the countries concerned. In 2023, 1/3 of Southeast Asia's manufacturing investment will come from China, and 1/3 of China's foreign direct investment in Vietnam's manufacturing industry will flow to the manufacturing of electronic components, semiconductors and communication equipment, increasing Vietnam's global market share in the field of electronic products from 2.68% in 2016 to 4.48% in 2022.
As an ancient civilization and a world power, China has always had a broad mind of being open, inclusive, mutually beneficial and win-win, and has firmly become a contributor to global development. China's development does not come at the expense of others' backwardness or stagnation. On the contrary, China continues to expand its opening up to the outside world, not only allowing goods, services, resources, and elements from all over the world to be organically integrated in China's large market to achieve maximum effectiveness and benefits, but also opening up to continuously inject new impetus and new opportunities into world development through its own development, sharing China's products, capital, and technology with the world, continuing to make the world economic pie bigger, and driving economic growth in the world, especially in the countries of the "Global South." Believing in China means believing in development, and choosing China means choosing win-win results.
(The author is the dean and professor of the China WTO Research Institute at the w88 casino)
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