CCIEE Holds the 84th Monthly Economic Talk

On 17 June 2016, CCIEE held the 84th Monthly Economic Talk on the theme of “New Progress in Establishing a New Open Economic System”. Mr. Zhang Xiaoqiang, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO of CCIEE presided over the talk. Zhao Jinping, Director-General of the Research Department of Foreign Economic Relations of the Development Research Center of the State Council, Lu Lei, Director-General of the Research Bureau of the People’s Bank of China, and Zhang Yansheng, Chief Research Fellow of CCIEE, respectively gave a speech.

Mr. Zhao Jinping noted that the world economic landscape is changing at a faster pace, a fact that reflects the growing dependence of the world economy on China’s development. At the same time, it raises new demands for China to build an open economy. Mr. Zhao elaborated on some of the important strategic arrangements the Chinese government has made to speed up the building of a new open economic system, including China’s new initiatives and measures in some key areas, such as global service trade, cross-border investment and finance.

Mr. Lu Lei held that China should open its financial sector in the following five aspects: first, market-oriented reform of the RMB exchange rate formation mechanism; second, internationalization of RMB; third, two-way opening of the financial industry; fourth, participation in the global financial governance; and fifth, RMB convertibility under the capital account. He indicated that financial openness is what the large economies would do, and all of the large economies would move from trade openness to investment openness and eventually two-way financial openness. The new open financial system should serve the transformation and upgrading and the global layout of the real economy based on its changed comparative advantages. To prevent risks effectively while making profits, the concept of orderly control should be upheld.

Mr. Zhang Yansheng said that China has made some progress in building an open economy, but it is still facing big challenges and problems. We need to do the following: first, further move up in the global value chain; second, enhance our capability of global operation to solve the problem of “packed trucks out, empty trucks in”, “filled containers out, empty containers in”; and third, build a modern industrial system with global competitiveness. In conclusion, he said that to build an open economy is to build a safeguard mechanism that fits well with the new normal and provides institutional guarantee for China to become a modern, law-based and responsible big country.

After giving the speeches, the experts answered questions from the media and audience. Some of the CCIEE researchers and representatives of the CCIEE member organizations, businesses, research institutions and the media attended the event.