“The Belt and Road” initiative is conducive to creating a new opening pattern and promoting economic transition, and has become a new engine of China’s economic development.

 

The recently closed Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee elaborated on the concept of open development and drew up a new blueprint for opening up. As the only way for China to go global, opening up will help to bring about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and a peaceful world order.
 

The level of China’s opening up will be greatly promoted through the establishment of a new pattern. An all-dimensional and multilevel pattern of opening up has initially formed over three decades. However, China’s low level of opening up and imbalanced regional development have been indisputable facts for a long time. It is necessary to optimize the pattern of opening up while improving the domestic industrial structure and enhancing the overall competitiveness of China’s economy.
 

In the fifth plenum, the CPC leadership proposed pushing forward the construction of “the Belt and Road” initiative as well as pragmatic cooperation to achieve mutual benefit with relevant countries and regions. It also called for promoting cooperation in international capacity and equipment manufacturing. The aim is to forge a new pattern of overall opening up characterized by close interactions on land and sea between China and foreign countries as well as two-way openness between the East and the West.

 
“The Belt and Road” initiative embodies the transition of China’s opening pattern from prioritizing sea transport to integrated development of sea and land routes. It is also a shift from attracting foreign capital to going global and from depending on markets of developed countries to driving global economic development. The establishment of China’s new opening pattern will not only bring about the optimization and adjustment of the economic structure but also vigorously elevate the level of opening up.
 

The new goal of building a world community of common interest will create an international environment conducive to China’s opening up. The nation’s development has become the main engine of global economic development since the reform and opening up, especially the global financial crisis. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China show that from 2011 to 2014, China contributed more than one-quarter of the world economic growth. In the first half of 2015, China’s contribution to global economic growth accounted for about 30 percent.
 

The opening strategy of mutual benefit aims to boost China’s self-development, improve related policies and systemic mechanisms, create more opportunities for the world, and achieve common development with the international community.
 

China is active in global economic governance and is now taking its place at the center of the world arena. History has strongly proven that opening up, as a distinct feature of the era in China over 30 decades, is a key measure to change the nation’s destiny and promote its international influence.
 

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed that China should comply with the tendency of its economy deeply blending in global economy, participate in global economic governance and enhance the development of the international economic order in the direction of equality, justice, and win-win cooperation. It also pointed out that China should actively bear international responsibilities and duties, join in negotiations on global climate change, and participate in implementing the 2030 sustainable development agenda.
 

The aforementioned measures, which aim to promote China’s institutional discourse power in global economic governance, indicate that the nation has begun to enter the center of the world arena, becoming an innovator of world economy and a builder of the international economic order.

 

Huang Yanmin is the associate dean of the College of Marxism Education at Capital Normal University.