Country can overcome challenges by adhering to top-level guidance

Against the backdrop of sluggish global transnational investment and intensifying international competition for investment, China faces a grim and complex situation in attracting foreign investment. The action plan for stabilizing foreign investment and other arrangements for stabilizing foreign investment that the State Council adopted on Monday, transmit a clear signal that the country will make great efforts to attract foreign investment.

In 2024, China's actual use of foreign capital was 826.25 billion yuan ($113.06 billion), down 27.1 percent year-on-year, but at the same time it saw 59,080 foreign-funded enterprises newly established, an increase of 9.9 percent year-on-year, which is sound evidence that China is still a hot destination for foreign capital.

To attract the inflow of foreign capital, it was made clear at Monday's executive meeting that China will deepen trials of opening-up in relevant fields, implement the full lifting of restrictions on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector, improve the comprehensive pilot opening-up of the service sector, and expand the scope of industries to encourage foreign investment.

China introduced measures to expand opening-up in telecommunications, medical care and other fields last year, and comprehensively removed restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector, with the number of nationwide restrictions on foreign investment access reduced from 31 to 29. Such measures have helped a lot in attracting foreign investment.

The reiteration at the meeting that the country is committed to giving equal treatment to domestic and foreign enterprises in government procurement, broadening financing channels for foreign enterprises, strengthening intellectual property protection, and providing better services for foreign-funded projects and providing more convenience for the exchange of foreign workers in terms of entry, exit, stay and residence, is also a clear crystallization of China's firm resolve to open wider to the outside and more deeply integrate itself into the world economy and rules-based system.

For a developing country such as China with a vast territory, a large population and uneven development, economic development has never been an easy task, but as long as the country maintains a pragmatic and problem-oriented approach, which constitutes a key part of Xi Jinping thought on the economy, any problem that arises in the course of its economic development will not be a problem.

- Wu Yixue, China Daily