Chen Min’er, Secretary of CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee, stressed in his speech the need to pull out all the stops to stabilize the base of foreign trade and foreign capital, striving for the new development of the city’s open economy, at the symposium on the development of Chongqing’s foreign trade and foreign-funded enterprises on March 31.

Chongqing Guoyuan Port (Photo by Wan Nan)

At the symposium, some representatives from foreign trade and foreign-funded enterprises and industry associations provided their advice and suggestions on such aspects as accelerating the market expanding, promoting the transformation and upgrading of enterprises, helping Chongqing brands to go global, improving the service and contact with foreign enterprises and foreign-related chambers of commerce, and giving play to the brand effect of modern services.

Foreign trade and foreign capital are two drivers for economic growth

As Chen points out, foreign trade and foreign capital are two drivers for economic growth, and making them stable is a pivotal part of six tasks for stabilizing the economy (others including employment, finance, investment, and expectations). In this regard, Chongqing should have a deeper understanding of important requirements in following sides: stabilizing the base of foreign trade and foreign capital, making a stable global supply chain, strengthening the international economic and trading cooperation to ensure a smooth international freight, and keeping economic and trading activities carried out in a normal manner. To that end, all parties should work hard to minimize the bad impacts incurred by the epidemic and lay stressed on key tasks.

Chongqing is threatened with new challenges and pressures in pursuing its development of open economy, due to the increasing uncertainties in the development of foreign trade and foreign capital in the wake of the continuous spread of the global pandemic. Therefore, all parties in Chongqing are required to focus efforts on such areas: simplify procedures for foreign trade management to keep a stable international market share by making full use of policies and tools such as export tax rebate and export credit insurance; further the coordination of production, supply and marketing in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain by stabilizing the supply chain and industry chain and giving play to the role of leading companies; make every effort to create a smooth freight by coordinating multimodal and intermodal transport, improving the capability of international air freight and expanding logistics transportation channels; strengthen the coordination among the government, banks, and enterprises by making the capital flow and credit scale stable; take practical moves to reduce the labor burden of enterprises while keeping them running in a normal manner and keeping employment stable; ensure various economic and trading activities carried out in a normal manner while keeping basic economic and trading services and stable business environment, and adopting new models in investment attraction and exhibition services; strengthen legal aid services for foreign trade to drive enterprises forward smoothly and make them better and stronger, while keeping existing enterprises and market players.

Stimulating new drivers for the development of the open economy

COVID-19 has merely posed a temporary and phased threat to foreign trade and foreign-funded enterprises. It necessitates seizing opportunities in four aspects. The first one is the profound adjustment in the pattern of globalization. Chongqing should involve itself in the co-construction of the Belt and Road, so as to promote more enterprises to move towards the middle and high end of the global industry chain and foster new growth drivers for foreign trade and foreign capital. The second one refers to the major strategic plans for regional development. The city should tap into the potential for development while expanding the opening-up, by maximizing every favorable condition in the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle. The third one is about the corridors to foreign countries. Efforts should be made to achieve the interlocking result of corridors driving logistics, economy, and trade, and finally, industries, and to expand diverse international markets. The last one involves the new economy and new business forms. In this respect, the city should enhance the artificial intelligence-empowered big data-related applications, and put more emphasis on online business, services, and management, thus stimulating new drivers for the development of the open economy.

The symposium was chaired by Tang Liangzhi, Deputy Secretary of CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee and Mayor of Chongqing, and attended by the city’s leaders including Wu Cunrong, Wang Fu, Duan Chenggang, Li Bo and Xiong Xue, Zheng Xiangdong, Party Group Member of Chongqing Municipal People’s Government, and heads from relevant departments, industry associations and some foreign trade and foreign-funded enterprises.