European Council president to visit China!
BEIJING, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, President of the European Council Charles Michel will visit China on Dec. 1, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying announced Monday.
Source: Embassy of The People's Republic of China in Georgia
GLOBALink | Xi's speech at G20 summit encouraging: observers
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday delivered a speech titled "Working Together to Meet the Challenges of Our Times and Build a Better Future" at the 17th summit of the Group of 20 (G20) in Bali, Indonesia.
Experts and observers spoke highly of Xi's speech, saying it's timely and very important for global development.
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GLOBALink | Xi calls for immediate efforts to promote self-reliance in science, technology
Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for immediate efforts to promote self-reliance in science and technology and a greater boost to secure the country's grip on core technologies in key fields and equipment manufacturing while visiting a robot manufacturer in China's Shenyang. #GLOBALink
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How China's push for economic stability bolsters global recovery
On the shop floor of Shaoxing's Buting textile company in east China's Zhejiang province, processing and manufacturing machines are humming around the clock. Container trucks loaded with colorful textile fabrics are ready to depart for the Ningbo-Zhoushan port, one of the world's busiest ports in terms of cargo throughput.
Located at Shaoxing's Keqiao District, a global textile distribution center, the company has managed to keep an upward momentum in production and sales after a pause caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
By sticking to a dynamic zero-COVID policy, China has largely put the latest waves of the pandemic under control. And manufacturers in the country have rebooted their on-site operation.
Despite the temporary disruption of the pandemic, the textile company has still maintained steady export growth, which stood at almost 200 million U.S. dollars last year, said Buting's General Manager Qian Shuijiang.
The company's performance is surely impressive. So is the country's economic resilience, which is reflected in the bouncing-back in the second quarter this year. It has proved once again that the Chinese economy, guided by "Xiconomics," the economic thought of Chinese President Xi Jinping, has flexibility and potential to forge ahead in an age of intertwined headwinds and uncertainties.
POLICY GUIDANCE FOR STABLE GROWTH
China's National Bureau of Statistics showed Friday that the country's GDP has secured positive growth in the second quarter and expanded 2.5 percent in the first half of the year.
Such an economic report card did not come easily. It was made amid a combination of tough challenges brought about by the lingering pandemic, simmering global geopolitical tensions and the staggering world economy.
In December, the tone-setting Central Economic Work Conference stressed the importance of maintaining stability while pursuing progress in 2022, and called for efforts to consolidate the economic foundations, enhance scientific and technological innovation, deepen reform via high-level opening-up, and boost high-quality development.
In response to multiple unexpected factors this year, the Chinese government has managed to follow the guideline of the meeting, and adopted in May a raft of targeted and vigorous measures, including raising tax refunds, smoothing logistics and transportation, boosting consumer spending and investment and safeguarding production, in order to stabilize economic performance and get the economy back to normal.
Thanks to those timely measures, China's economy saw a steady recovery amid the increasingly complicated global environment, demonstrating its strong resilience and ample potential for long-term development.
In June, the country's retail sales of consumer goods registered a year-on-year increase of 3.1 percent following drops in April and May, foreign trade picked up to 14.3 percent, and the value-added industrial output rose 3.9 percent year on year, up from a 0.7 percent gain in May. Meanwhile, China has successfully kept its consumer prices stable against the background of surging inflations in several major economies.
Over the years, the Chinese government has effectively responded to various unanticipated challenges through stable long-term macro planning as well as flexible and pragmatic micro policy adjustments, which has ensured the stability of economic fundamentals and achieved a sustainable growth, said Charles Onunaiju, director of the Abuja-based Center for China Studies in Nigeria.
"When you have the basic fundamentals put in place, it is easy to absorb shocks, especially unforeseen ones," he said.
ADDING CERTAINTY TO GLOBAL RECOVERY
For decades, China has maintained a major driving force of global economic growth. Since the onset of the pandemic, it has been stepping up efforts in stimulating domestic consumption, stabilizing industrial and supply chains and introducing more measures for wider opening-up. Its role in an integrated global economy has grown even more significant.
Trade has long been a key force to energize the global economy, and to electrify greater common development worldwide. China, a staunch champion of global trade and an open world economy, has maintained its position as the world's largest trading nation in goods for many years. In the first half of this year, China's trade with its top three trading partners -- the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the European Union and the United States -- expanded by 10.6 percent, 7.5 percent and 11.7 percent respectively on an annual basis.
To help stabilize global supply chains rocked by the pandemic, many cities in China have offered more transportation services, and launched new direct air and sea routes to facilitate cross-border flow of people and goods, giving a strong boost to international trade and global recovery.
Take the recently launched container shipping line from Dongguan, a manufacturing hub in China's Guangdong province, to Britain's metropolitan Liverpool. The whole journey only takes 28 days, and is at the moment the fastest shipping line from south China to Europe.
China-Europe freight trains, launched in 2011, have also been playing a notable role in bolstering global trade, especially after the outbreak of the pandemic. On July 11, a freight train loaded with electronic products, mechanical parts and daily necessities arrived in Duisburg. It marked the 10,000th trip made by the trans-continental trade service operated by the China-Europe Railway Express (Chongqing).
While the freight trains have opened a door for Chinese firms to tap business opportunities in Europe, they have also brought real benefits for local economies. Duisport CEO Markus Bangen told Xinhua that the cooperation between Germany and China is mutually beneficial and he looks forward to widened bilateral cooperation.
"The stronger China's economic development is, the more countries that have trade and economic cooperation with China will benefit," said Anna Malindog-Uy, a researcher of Philippine-BRICS Strategic Studies, a think tank.
Agustin Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, said in a recent interview with Xinhua that the world economy under severe shocks needs China.
China has been an engine of global growth for quite some decades, he said. "I think it's important for that to be preserved."
CONSOLIDATING GLOBAL CONFIDENCE
China attracted an increasing number of international investors in the past decades with a super-sized domestic market, a complete industrial chain, a favorable business environment, strong policy support for the real economy, as well as continuous efforts to opening-up.
Facing the downward pressure caused by Omicron-induced disruptions, foreign-funded enterprises have successfully coordinated pandemic response and business operations, and achieved stable revenue growth with the support of local authorities.
FCI Connectors Dongguan Ltd. is a subsidiary of U.S. Amphenol Corporation, one of the world's major suppliers of interconnect systems. The Dongguan company registered a total of 1.8 billion yuan (270 million dollars) in sales in 2021, and expects a 10-percent increase to about 2 billion yuan (296 million dollars) this year.
With growing understanding of the fact that the fundamentals of the Chinese economy remain unchanged, foreign firms have remained confident in China's development. Many of them have chosen to maintain or expand businesses in the world's second largest consumption market. Noel Quinn, group chief executive of HSBC, told Xinhua earlier that the financial institution expects to invest more than 3 billion yuan (440 million dollars) in China between 2020 and 2025.
Figures from China's Ministry of Commerce showed that in the first five months, foreign direct investment into the Chinese mainland, in actual use, expanded 17.3 percent from a year earlier.
In Onunaiju's view, China's pledge to continue optimizing the investment environment and opening up its market will help bolster the confidence of foreign investors and stabilize the expectations of international trade partners.
Malindog-Uy at the Philippine-BRICS Strategic Studies said she believes that China will continue to attract foreign investment in the future given its market size, rapid development of high-tech, competent labor resources as well as the relatively modern economic system.
"These positive factors will provide room and momentum for the continued recovery and growth of the Chinese economy in the future," she said.
Xi reiterates China's resolve to open up at high standard
BEIJING, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping Wednesday reiterated that China's resolve to open up at a high standard will not change, and the door of China will open still wider to the world.
Xi made the remarks when addressing the conference of the 70th anniversary of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and the Global Trade and Investment Promotion Summit via video link.
Noting that founded in 1952 as a China-based institution with a global outlook, Xi said the CCPIT has been playing an important role in strengthening the bond of interest between Chinese and foreign businesses, promoting international economic and trade exchanges, and facilitating state-to-state relations.
The 70-year journey of the CCPIT has been an epitome of China's ever-expanding opening-up endeavor, and an important witness of how businesses from different countries could share in development opportunities and benefit from win-win cooperation, said Xi.
Xi stressed that with the world facing a pandemic and drastic changes both unseen in a century, economic globalization is experiencing headwinds, and the world is entering a new period of volatility and transformation. Now more than ever, business communities across the world yearn for peace and development, call for fairness and justice, and aspire for win-win cooperation.
Calling for pulling together to defeat COVID-19, Xi said the pandemic that has been going on unabated is posing a serious threat to the life and health of the people, and taking a heavy toll on the world economy.
He laid stress on putting people and their lives first, actively engaging in international cooperation on vaccine R&D, production and distribution, bolstering global public health governance, jointly building multiple lines of defense against the virus, and working for a global community of health for all.
Xi also called for reinvigorating trade and investment, urging balancing pandemic response and economic development, and strengthening macroeconomic policy coordination across countries.
He stressed the need to advance the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in all respects, and help the global economy upgrade its growth drivers, shift its growth model and adjust its structure so as to steer it onto a track of long-term, healthy and stable growth.
To allow development gains to better trickle down to people of all countries, Xi urged supporting the WTO-centered multilateral trading regime, ensuring security and stability of the global industrial and supply chains, and making the "pie" of cooperation bigger.
When it comes to unleashing the power of innovation in driving development, he called for tapping into the potential of innovation in spurring growth, jointly stepping up intellectual property protection, making rules on the basis of extensive participation and consensus building, and fostering an open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory environment for scientific and technological development.
Xi stressed efforts to intensify exchanges and cooperation on innovation, facilitate integration of science and technology with economic growth, increase the sharing of innovation results, and remove all barriers that hamper the flow of knowledge, technology, talent and other factors of innovation.
Talking about improving on global governance, he urged upholding true multilateralism, embracing a global governance vision featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and mobilizing resources from across the world to meet global challenges and advance global development.
Xi called for choosing dialogue over confrontation, tearing down walls rather than erect walls, pursuing integration instead of decoupling, opting for inclusiveness, not exclusion, and guiding reforms of the global governance system with the principle of fairness and justice.
"China's resolve to open up at a high standard will not change, and that the door of China will open still wider to the world," Xi reiterated.
China will continue to foster an enabling business environment that is based on market principles, governed by law and up to international standards, Xi said, adding that China will pursue high-standard implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement and high-quality Belt and Road cooperation, and offer more market, investment and growth opportunities to the global business community.
"Let us join hands to uphold peace, development, cooperation and win-win partnership, work together to meet the problems facing the global economy, trade and investment, and jointly usher in an even brighter future," Xi said.
GLOBALink | Xi tells Chinese youth to contribute energy, creativity to rejuvenation
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday hailed the contributions made by young communists over the past century and called on them to offer energy and creativity to push forward national rejuvenation.
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GLOBALink | Belt and Road, a pathway to a brighter future
"The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a public road open to all, not a private path owned by one single party."
Over 8 years, the BRI, proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, has grown into the world's largest international cooperation platform.
The joint construction of the BRI projects conveyed confidence and strength to the international community and made important contributions to global anti-epidemic cooperation and economic recovery. #GLOBALink #BeltandRoad
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GLOBALink | Xi says China opposes using human rights to meddle in others' internal affairs
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday said China does not approve of using human rights to meddle in other countries' internal affairs in a virtual meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, according to Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng.
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Xiplomacy: Xi's consistent call for healthy China-U.S. ties
BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to the China-U.S. relationship and has been consistently pushing for its sound and steady development.
Since Joe Biden became U.S. president in January, Xi has on multiple occasions reiterated his views and proposals. The following are some highlights of his remarks.
Nov. 16, 2021
In a virtual meeting with Biden, Xi noted that both China and the United States are at critical stages of development, and the "global village" of humanity faces multiple challenges.
As the world's two largest economies and permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and the United States need to increase communication and cooperation, each run their domestic affairs well and, at the same time, shoulder their share of international responsibilities, and work together to advance the noble cause of world peace and development, Xi said.
He stressed that a sound and steady China-U.S. relationship is required for advancing the two countries' respective development and for safeguarding a peaceful and stable international environment, including finding effective responses to global challenges such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.
He highlighted mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation as three principles in developing China-U.S. relations in the new era.
He called on the two countries to respect each other's social systems and development paths, respect each other's core interests and major concerns, and respect each other's right to development.
The world is big enough for the two countries to develop individually and collectively, Xi said. "The right thing to do is to choose mutual benefit over the zero-sum game or the I-win-you-lose approach."
Nov. 9, 2021
In his congratulatory letter to the 2021 Gala Dinner hosted by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Xi pointed out that the China-U.S. relationship is among the most important bilateral relationships in the world today.
Right now, China-U.S. relations are at a critical historical juncture, and both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation, Xi noted, adding that cooperation is the only right choice.
He stressed that following the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, China stands ready to work with the United States to enhance exchanges and cooperation across the board, jointly address regional and international issues as well as global challenges and, in the meantime, properly manage differences, so as to bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of sound and steady development.
Sept. 10, 2021
Taking a phone call from Biden, Xi pointed out that for some time, due to the U.S. policy on China, the China-U.S. relationship has run into serious difficulty, which serves neither the fundamental interests of the people of the two countries, nor the common interests of countries around the world.
Noting that China and the United States are respectively the biggest developing country and the biggest developed country, Xi stressed that whether they can handle their relationship well bears on the future of the world, and it is a question of the century to which the two countries must provide a good answer.
When China and the United States cooperate, the two countries and the world will benefit; when China and the United States are in confrontation, the two countries and the world will suffer, he said, adding that getting the relationship right is not optional, but something we must do and must do well.
He suggested that the two countries should look ahead and press forward, demonstrate strategic courage and political resolve, and bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of stable development as soon as possible for the good of the people in both countries and around the world.
Feb. 11, 2021
Taking a phone call from Biden on the eve of the Lunar New Year, Xi pointed out that the restoration and growth of China-U.S. relations has been the most important development in international relations over the past half century and more.
When China and the United States work together, they can accomplish a great deal for the good of both countries and the world at large; confrontation between the two countries, however, will definitely be disastrous for both countries and the world, Xi said.
Emphasizing that the China-U.S. relationship is currently at an important juncture, Xi said it is the common desire of both peoples and the wider international community to see the sound and stable development of China-U.S. relations.
The two countries, Xi suggested, should make joint efforts in the same direction, follow the spirit of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, focus on cooperation, manage their differences, and work for the sound and stable development of China-U.S. relations.
GLOBALink | Highlights of Xi-Biden virtual meeting
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Joe Biden via video link on Tuesday morning (Beijing Time). The two presidents exchanged views on China-U.S. relations and issues of common concern in the meeting. Click the video for the highlights of Xi-Biden virtual meeting.
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