Let's see what they say, leading high-level opening-up to the outside world with institutional openness
On September 20th, the Open Sub Forum of the 10th Anniversary Theme Forum of China's Pilot Free Trade Zone was held around the theme of "Leading High Level Opening up with Institutional Openness". Zhou Hanmin, member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, former Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the People's Republic of China and former Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Yi Xiaozhun, former Deputy Minister of Commerce and former Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization, Bai Ruiqian, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the International Exhibition and Project Association, Guo Tengze, President of Volvo Construction Equipment Asia, Xia Mingchen, Joint Director and Managing Director of Hanling Capital Asia Pacific Investment, and Xie Fengcai, President of Raffles Medical China, delivered keynote speeches.
Zhou Hanmin delivered a keynote speech titled "Further Integration of High Quality Development of Free Trade Zones into International Rules". He said, "As an important strategic measure for China to promote reform and opening up in the new era, the free trade zone has truly stimulated and activated our country's high-quality development. Every step taken by the free trade zone is worth summarizing, and the most important thing is to always stand on the land of China and look at the world and integrate into the world."
Currently, international economic and trade rules are undergoing profound and complex changes. In 2021, China successively applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement. Compared to the terms, there is a certain gap in China's digital trade, financial services, and other aspects.
Zhou Hanmin put forward several suggestions for the high-quality development of free trade zones: firstly, coordinate development and security, and establish cross-border data flow rules that are conducive to the high-quality development of digital trade; Secondly, we will vigorously promote the financial service industry and deepen the opening and innovation of the financial sector; The third is to focus on market entities and build a market-oriented, legal, and international business environment. "The future of the free trade zone is vast, and we must always benchmark against the highest international standards and the best level, step by step leading the future development direction of domestic opening up!" said Zhou Hanmin.
Yi Xiaozhun has participated in the 15 year negotiations for China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and based on his experience in WTO negotiations, he shared his views on the pilot free trade zone.
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"What is institutional opening up? I believe that China's accession to the WTO is the most typical and successful institutional opening up. China's various industries, especially those that have opened up after joining the WTO, have made significant progress in fierce international competition. The whole nation and even the world economy have benefited greatly from China's high-level institutional opening up. Therefore, continuing to promote more institutional opening up, especially in the service industry, should be the focus of future work in the free trade pilot zone."
Yi Xiaozhun stated that the pilot free trade zone should serve as a vanguard and assault team for reform and opening up, and use the courage and courage of China's accession to the World Trade Organization to explore and try, paving a new path for institutional innovation in promoting high-level opening up nationwide. "The key to institutional openness is still to obtain the support of regulatory and policy-making departments. Therefore, our administrative authorities should first further liberate their minds, dispel concerns about openness, grant greater reform autonomy to free trade zones, and explore ways to comprehensively expand institutional openness."
Over the past decade, the construction of the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone has created a better environment for business entities, and a large number of enterprises have benefited from it, continuously integrating into the domestic market and growing stronger.
"Why do we choose the Shanghai Free Trade Zone? Shanghai has many advantages. It is a national highland for private equity funds and a gathering place for global asset management institutions. As a pioneer and experimental field of financial reform, many policy and institutional innovations have been launched here." Xia Mingchen said.
Hanling Capital was founded in the United States and has over 30 years of rich experience in private equity market investment. In 2022, Hanling Capital announced its eligibility for the Shanghai QFLP pilot program, which refers to foreign institutional investors converting foreign capital into RMB funds after passing qualification approval and regulatory procedures for their foreign exchange funds, and investing in the domestic PE and VC markets. With the approval of this project, Hanling Capital became the first S fund established through QFLP in Shanghai.
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"Based on our confidence and determination in our domestic business in China, we plan to gradually expand our business scope from QFLP pilot to domestic RMB funds." Xia Mingchen stated that Hanling Capital's future vision is to continuously support the further development of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone through financial innovation, including S funds, and financial investment methods.
Looking ahead to the future, the attending guests suggested that we should better benchmark against the latest international rules and advanced world levels, focus on institutional openness and internal and external linkage, create a market-oriented, rule of law, and international business environment, make good use of Pudong's development, opening up, and innovation policies, and make positive contributions to building an open economy.
Text: Zhang Shihuan
Photography: Zheng Feng
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