2023-09-03 03:14:15
On August 23, 2023, Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, with Cai Qi behind him. (Gia nluigi Guercia/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
[The Epoch Times, September 2, 2023](Reported by Epoch Times reporter Cheng Jing) The leader of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, said on Saturday (2nd) that China will expand opening up in multiple service industries to promote cross-border trade and investment. However, experts believe that before opening up, Beijing must bring domestic standards in line with international norms and address “national security” concerns.
On Saturday (2nd), Xi Jinping said in a video speech at the China International Service Trade Fair held in Beijing that China will relax market access for the service industry, promote the opening up of cross-border service trade, and steadily expand “institutional opening up.” “Institutional opening” refers to the reform of domestic standards to bring them in line with international norms.
Xi Jinping said that China will carry out negotiations on the negative list of service trade and investment, and expand opening up in areas such as telecommunications, tourism, law, and professional examinations. “China will continue to be committed to promoting high-standard opening up.”
The 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services, sponsored by the government, was held in Beijing from Sept. 2 to 6.
However, Zhao Xijun, a finance professor at Renmin University in Beijing, was quoted by the South China Morning Post as saying that promoting service trade and opening up the service industry is a challenge for China because they involve different standards adopted by different countries and cultures.
“China has a huge market in various services such as telecommunications, law, tourism and vocational examinations. However, the government still has a lot of work to do to bring domestic standards in line with international norms.”
In addition, he said, there were “national security” issues to be addressed and “a dispute resolution mechanism must be developed before the services sector can be fully opened.”
The CCP’s “Anti-espionage Law,” which came into effect on July 1, which has recently attracted widespread concern from foreign investors, was enacted in the name of “maintaining national security.”
The U.S. intelligence agency has warned foreign companies in China that the definition of the law is vague, and it is likely to be interpreted by the CCP, which will increase the uncertainty of life and business, and must be more vigilant.
Before the “anti-espionage law” was promulgated, in March this year, the Chinese Communist Party’s public security raided the Beijing office of the American consulting company Mintz Group and arrested five Chinese employees; in mid-April, Bain & Company, a well-known American consulting company, (Bain & Company) Shanghai office employees were investigated by the police.
A senior executive of Meisi Zhizhi Group said at the time: “We don’t know why the company was raided. “We don’t know who detained them, and we don’t know when they will be released.”
The Wall Street Journal stated that this incident may make multinational companies doing business in China uneasy, highlighting the increasingly hostile environment in China, and it is likely to undermine the efforts of the top leaders of the Communist Party of China to secure investment and assist China’s economic growth.
China’s economic environment remains unchanged, and the authorities’ propaganda may be ineffective
In the past six months, China’s economic recovery has been sluggish, youth unemployment has reached a new high, real estate has been sluggish, the stock market has been sluggish, the renminbi has fallen, foreign capital has fled, exports are weak, and a series of economic data have all fallen short of expectations.
The CCP has repeatedly called out to attract foreign investment, support private enterprises, boost the market, and optimize the business environment. However, the flight of foreign capital set a record in August. Northbound funds, which are regarded as the vane of foreign capital, reduced their positions by 89.683 billion yuan (about 12.3 billion U.S. dollars) in August, setting a record high in net sales in a single month.
According to data from the Ministry of Commerce of the Communist Party of China, China’s exports in July fell by 14.5% from the same period last year, the largest drop since February 2020; imports also fell for five consecutive months. In the first seven months, exports fell by 5%, and service exports fell by 6.3% year-on-year, about 1.54 trillion yuan.
Recently, the CCP has released a series of measures to rescue the stock market and the housing market, including reducing stamp duty, standardizing shareholding reduction, tightening the pace of IPOs, introducing new housing loan policies, and banks lowering deposit interest rates, etc.
Today, Xi Jinping once again called out to “promote the opening up of cross-border service trade and expand opening up.” However, in the past few years, the CCP authorities have suppressed the real estate market, suppressed the education and training industry, suppressed the Internet industry, carried out a three-year epidemic blockade, and promulgated a series of restrictive policies such as the anti-espionage law, etc., which made the world lose its sense of control. Confidence in the Chinese economy.
Huang Shicong, a Taiwanese financial expert, recently told The Epoch Times that China needs an environment suitable for economic development. “It’s not just about stimulating the stock market and real estate market, but about the entire environment. You have to give the public confidence.” “Otherwise, after the short-lived effect, there will be return to the downward trend of the economy.”
Editor in charge: Fang Xiao#
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