China embraces greater opening-up in 2019

Themed by "Shared Future, Concerted Action, Common Development", the Boao Forum for Asia kicked off on March 26 in a coastal town in CHINA's southern island province of Hainan.

Since its formation in 2001, this forum has been gaining worldwide prominence and recognition and has even been coined the “Asian Davos”.

The world set sights on CHINA again. This second-largest economy has seen economic growth drop to a 30-year low. Earlier this month Chinese Premier Li Keqiang just announced CHINA's 2019 economic growth target of 6.0 to 6.5 percent, lower than last year's goal of around 6.5 percent.

Leslie Maasdorp, vice president and chief financial officer of the New Development Bank shared with CGTN Dialogue at the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan his visions for CHINA's economic performance.

The world's entering “a challenging period” of rising protectionism and unilateralism, Maasdorp said although CHINA is undergoing a slowdown in growth, CHINA's policymakers begin to focus on “greater opening-up” as the country enjoyed the fruits of its 40 years of reform and opening-up, and that provides new impetus to CHINA's Development.

He also believed CHINA will continue to be a major contributor to the global economic growth, in terms of consumption, investment and trade. CHINA is indeed experiencing a long-term of structural changes, but instead of pursuing speed and expansion, now CHINA emphasizes much more on the quality of the growth–a more green, inclusive, and sustainable economy, he added.

He mentioned that the most eye-catching part of what CHINA has done this year is to open up the financial sector, which was already put forward by President Xi Jinping last year in his opening remarks in Boao Forum for Asia.

Now with the Foreign Investment Law's legislation during the Two Sessions, which levels the playing fields for foreign firms, more significant new opportunities towards CHINA's market-oriented economy will follow, he said.

The next phase of CHINA's economic growth as he predicted will be on the bond market. “The bond market in CHINA is the third largest in the world, however, it is 98 percent owned by domestic institutions, only 2 percent by foreign. With the opening-up of the new regulated measures that have been announced, the potential's going to be new inflows into the Chinese bond market going forward”, said Maasdorp.

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