Third plenum highlights new reform blueprint and expanded global engagement

The just-concluded third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China serves as an essential window to observe China's efforts to promote high-quality development and further its high-level opening up, as well as showcasing Beijing's resolve to share its development dividends with the world, analysts said.

A group of heavyweight executives, led by the US-China Business Council concluded on Tuesday their three-day trip to Beijing, where they met with Chinese officials and obtained first-hand insight following the conclusion of the widely-watched third plenum.

"We appreciate the opportunity to engage with Chinese leaders to promote commercial relations and advocate our priorities for the benefit of our companies and employees," a press release from the council quoted FedEx Corporation President Raj Subramaniam, as saying.

"As the first delegation from the United States business community to visit China after the plenum, they can feel the opportunities derived from China's further deepening reform and opening up to the world, especially to the US," said Gao Lingyun, a researcher with the Institute of World Economics and Politics with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The third plenum has charted a new blueprint for China's reform and opening-up and put forward more than 300 key reform measures in various fields.

According to a resolution adopted at the third plenary session, China has decided to improve the institutions and mechanisms in order to foster new quality productive forces in line with the local conditions.

China will work to facilitate key breakthroughs in technology, innovative allocation of production factors and in-depth industrial transformation and upgrading, it said.

Faced with a new round of techno-scientific revolution and industrial transformation, Gao said science and technology have been given a prominent role, which would forcefully drive China's high-quality development.

According to the resolution, China will seize the initiative by opening its commodity, service, capital and labor markets wider to the outside world in an orderly manner and increasing unilateral opening to the world's least developed countries.

It will also expand the catalog of encouraged industries for foreign investment and appropriately shorten the negative list for foreign investment.

"All these measures fully prove that opening up is a defining feature of Chinese modernization. China's expansion of high-level opening up will inject confidence and impetus into the development of countries around the world," Gao said.

China's huge market would continue to drive global economic growth and at the same time Beijing could offer its advanced factors of production, such as finance and technologies, to countries in need, which would help them upgrade their economies and better explore ways to achieve modernization, he said.