President Xi Jinping Delivered a Video Address
At the Conference of the 70th Anniversary of CCPIT and
Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit

On May 18, President Xi Jinping delivered a video address at the Conference of the 70th Anniversary of CCPIT and Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit.

President Xi noted that founded in 1952 as a China-based institution with a global outlook, the CCPIT has been playing an important role in strengthening the bond of interest between Chinese and foreign businesses, promoting international economic and trade exchanges, and facilitating state-to-state relations. The 70-year journey of the CCPIT has been an epitome of China's ever-expanding opening-up endeavor, and an important witness of how businesses from different countries could share in development opportunities and benefit from win-win cooperation.

President Xi stressed that with the world facing a pandemic and drastic changes both unseen in a century, economic globalization is experiencing headwinds, and the world is entering a new period of volatility and transformation. Now more than ever, business communities across the world yearn for peace and development, call for fairness and justice, and aspire for win-win cooperation. President Xi advised efforts on the following four fronts.

First, we need to pull together to defeat COVID-19. The pandemic that has been going on unabated is posing a serious threat to the life and health of the people, and taking a heavy toll on the world economy. We must put people and their lives first, actively engage in international cooperation on vaccine R&D, production and distribution, bolster global public health governance, jointly build multiple lines of defense against the virus, and work for a global community of health for all.

Second, we need to reinvigorate trade and investment. We need to balance pandemic response and economic development, and strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination across countries. We need to advance the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in all respects, and help the global economy upgrade its growth drivers, shift its growth model and adjust its structure so as to steer it onto a track of long-term, healthy and stable growth. We should support the WTO-centered multilateral trading regime, ensure security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains, and make the "pie" of cooperation bigger to allow development gains to better trickle down to people of all countries.

Third, we need to unleash the power of innovation in driving development. We should tap into the potential of innovation in spurring growth, jointly step up intellectual property protection, make rules on the basis of extensive participation and consensus building, and foster an open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory environment for scientific and technological development. We should intensify exchanges and cooperation on innovation, facilitate integration of science and technology with economic growth, increase the sharing of innovation results, and remove all barriers that hamper the flow of knowledge, technology, talent and other factors of innovation.

Fourth, we need to improve on global governance. We should uphold true multilateralism, embrace a global governance vision featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and mobilize resources from across the world to meet global challenges and advance global development. We should choose dialogue over confrontation, tear down walls rather than erect walls, pursue integration instead of decoupling, opt for inclusiveness, not exclusion, and guide reforms of the global governance system with the principle of fairness and justice.

President Xi stressed that China's resolve to open up at a high standard will not change, and that the door of China will open still wider to the world. China will continue to foster an enabling business environment that is based on market principles, governed by law and up to international standards. We will pursue high-standard implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and offer more market, investment and growth opportunities to the global business community. President Xi called for joint efforts to uphold peace, development, cooperation and win-win partnership, meet the problems facing the global economy, trade and investment, and usher in an even brighter future.