(Yicai) Nov. 6 -- China will continue to push for high-level opening-up in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone and the city’s Pudong New Area where the zone is located, said Commerce Vice Minister Guo Tinting.

The zone will align with high-standard international economic and trade rules, Guo said today during a forum at the China International Import Expo, and it will focus on opening up trade in goods and services, as well as facilitating customs clearance, beefing up intellectual property rights protections, and enhancing risk prevention and litigation mechanisms.

High-level opening-up refers to China’s commitment to implement a comprehensive and ambitious set of policies and reforms aimed at further opening the world’s second-largest economy to the rest of the world.

The commerce ministry will support Pudong to make full use of the Shanghai FTZ’s advantages in terms of institutional innovation to accelerate the cross-border flow and allocation of talent, capital, technology, and data factors and push for shared dividends from China's opening-up and development with foreign investors, Guo added.

Set up in September 2013, the Shanghai FTZ was introduced as a pilot project to serve as a testing ground and showcase for economic and financial reforms aimed at further opening up China’s economy to international trade and investment. Its inception marked the start of the national-level FTZ program.

In the 10 years since it was launched, the Shanghai FTZ has brought in dozens of foreign capital projects that set “firsts” nationwide, including Tesla's Gigafactory, along with the opening of 140,000 free trade accounts. By the end of last year, it had attracted USD58.6 billion in foreign investment, or about 30 percent of Shanghai's total over the same period. 

Pudong has a total output value of CNY1.6 trillion (USD220.1 billion) in 2022, driven mainly by the FTZ, up 150 percent from the value in 2013, and industrial output rose 50 percent to CNY1.3 trillion, according to data released by the Shanghai government.

Amid a complicated external environment, China should adhere to the opening-up process, as well as deepening reforms and enhancing alignment with and mutual-recognition of international rules and standards, Wang Yiming, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, noted at the forum.

The country should focus on opening up its services sector and further shortening the negative list for foreign investment access, while advancing opening-up in the telecom, educational, cultural, and medical sectors and adopting national treatment for foreign capital to drive fair competition between domestic and foreign firms, Wang added.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Tom Litting