The Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng attended and addressed the Motivating and Deployment Conference of Expanding and Opening the Comprehensive Pilots of Service Industry in Beijing on September 14.
Gao Hucheng pointed out that the expansion of opening up of the service industry is of great significance in China’s overall reform and opening up situation. The service industry is an important field of opening up at present and in the future, marking one of the main battlefields of stabilizing the increase, adjusting the structure, promoting the reform and benefiting the livelihood. Expanding the opening of the service industry is of profound significance in promoting the synergetic development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, optimizing the core function of the capital and highlighting Beijing’s role as the national political center, cultural center, international exchange center and scientific innovation center.
Gao said that since the international financial crisis, the cross-border trade and investment of the service industry has become an important power to promote the profound development of the economic globalization, and the international trade and economic negotiations related with the service industry have been obviously accelerated. The service trade is one of the important issues both in the China-Korea FTA and China-Australia FTA signed in June, and in the on-going RCEP negotiations. At present, China is in a critical period of moving from a high and medium income economy to a high income economy. Through promoting the development of the service industry and expanding the opening up, new power will be injected to stabilize the growth, expand the employment, adjust the structure, promote the innovation, push forward the national economy, and improve the quality and efficiency. According to the decision and deployment of the Central Party Committee and the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce is actively studying how to relax the control over market access, and how to take the opportunity of the free trade area negotiations and China-US and China-EU investment agreements negotiation. It aims to promote the liberalization and facilitation of the trade investment in the service field, and the development of the service industry by high-level opening up.
Gao Hucheng emphasized that General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that pilot is the important task and the significant method of reform. The current situation of the development of service industry and its specificity need to be opened step by step and the reproducible and referential experience and practice figured out in certain areas and scales should be steadily and gradually promoted. Beijing took the lead in forming the service-oriented economic development pattern with favorable industrial development basis and high-level opening up. Beijing enjoys enormous potentiality of rich education strength, abundant colleges, universities, talents and comprehensive, multilevel and high-starting advantages to expand the opening up. The Central Party Committee and the State Council decided to carry out the comprehensive pilot of the service industry in Beijing and jointly form the troika of the opening up pilots of the service industry with the free trade pilot sites and the service trade liberalization of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau to accelerate the construction process of the pilot.
Gao Hucheng requested that Beijing and the Ministry of Commerce should quickly formulate the implementation plan of the comprehensive pilots and define the pilot policy measure and the task list under the vigorous support of the relevant departments after the State Council gave an official reply agreeing Beijing to promote the service industry and to expand and open its comprehensive pilots. Next, the Ministry of Commerce will work with Beijing to fully boost the pilot work and explore more institutional requirements as soon as possible according to the spirit of the speech made by Secretary Guo Jinlong.
Attending were major leaders of the municipal Party committee and government of Beijing, the Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming, Assistant Minister Liu Haiquan, heads of the relevant departments of the Ministry of Commerce, heads of all committees, offices and departments of Beijing and heads of all districts and counties of Beijing.
In this May, the State Council gave an official approval of the General Plan of Expanding the Comprehensive Pilots of Beijing Service Industry submitted by the Ministry of Commerce and the people’s government of Beijing. The above two organizations issues the General Plan on September 13. This conference marks the official launch of the pilot work and the pilot period is 3 years.
