What is the key to stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment?, Faced with the conspiracy of certain countries to "decouple and break the chain"
Recently, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Optimizing the Environment and Increasing the Attraction of Foreign Investment", which clearly proposes to improve the quality of foreign investment utilization, ensure the national treatment of foreign-invested enterprises, continuously strengthen the protection of foreign investment, improve the level of investment and operation convenience, and increase financial and tax support.
Stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment is not only the main manifestation of high-level opening up, but also a choice to promote institutional opening up. In recent years, due to the impact of the anti globalization wave and the epidemic, foreign trade exports have been under significant downward pressure, and stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment has become an urgent task. Fundamentally speaking, the key to stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment is to respond to the concerns of foreign-funded enterprises, stabilize confidence and expectations, attract and utilize foreign investment with greater efforts and more effectiveness, and optimize and stabilize the foreign investment environment.
1、 Fully recognize the irreplaceable and unique important role of foreign investment in promoting high-level opening up
At the beginning of the reform and opening up, we suffered from a shortage of capital and were eager to seek foreign investment. We always adhered to the principle of promoting reform through opening up. The door to opening up to the outside world became wider and wider, not only forming China's leading scale of foreign investment in the world, but also becoming the developing country that has attracted the most foreign investment for many consecutive years. Moreover, the high-level open economic system is becoming increasingly perfect. But with the rapid growth of China's economy and becoming a major net exporter of capital, some people have developed a complacency of "not lacking money", and their emphasis on foreign investment has significantly decreased. The main manifestation is that they turn a blind eye to the loss of foreign investment and hold a indifferent attitude. This attitude is wrong.
Foreign investment plays a unique and irreplaceable important role in China's economic development. Foreign investment is the connection point between the domestic and international markets, and foreign-funded enterprises can not only make up for the lack of domestic capital, but also bring information flow, advanced technology, and management experience. Of course, with the development of the Chinese economy to this day, we should not blindly believe in the absolute growth of foreign investment, but rather introduce more high-quality foreign investment that can bring us technology or export markets. The economic and trade relationship between China and developed countries is irreplaceable, and people often refer to it as the "ballast stone" of China US relations, which shows its importance. At present, both in terms of investment amount and the number of investment enterprises, China's foreign investment still mainly comes from relatively developed economies. According to the "China Foreign Investment Statistics Bulletin 2022", as of 2021, foreign direct investment by country, except for China's Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan regions, as well as the British Virgin Islands and American Samoa, has accumulated the top 10 enterprises, namely the United States, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France.
To promote high-level opening up to the outside world, we must not only retain high-quality stock foreign investment, but also attract more high-quality foreign investment. Some Western countries, led by the United States, are attempting to block circular development and isolate us from the world by implementing measures such as neck locking, decoupling, and chain breaking. In this situation, it is even more necessary for us to adhere to high-level openness, promote institutional openness, attract high-quality foreign investment, and thereby bring about the expansion of technology or export markets.
2、 Stabilizing and attracting foreign investment plays a strategic role in accelerating the construction of a new development pattern in China
Accelerating the construction of a new development pattern with domestic circulation as the main body and domestic and international dual circulation promoting each other is not a closed domestic single circulation, nor is it a self-development that excludes foreign investment from closing the door. Instead, it is necessary to fully rely on China's super large-scale market advantages, attract global resource elements with domestic circulation, and better leverage the linkage effect of domestic and international markets and two types of resources.
At present, China's economy has deeply integrated into the world economy, and its industrial connections and interdependence with many countries around the world are relatively high. The domestic and foreign demand markets themselves are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Even as we have become the world's second largest economy, the role of foreign investment remains important and unique. It can not only make up for the lack of domestic capital, but also bring information flow, advanced technology, and management experience. By more effectively attracting foreign investment, participating in international economic cooperation and competition at a higher level of openness, promoting technological upgrading, and improving the quality of development, it is a driving force and important support for promoting and enhancing the quality of internal circulation. It is conducive to improving the ability to allocate resources globally, and thus better striving for strategic initiative in open development.
Faced with the challenges and difficulties caused by the anti globalization wave and the pandemic, and under the influence of multiple factors such as the tightening of the financial and technological environment in developed economies, international capital pays more attention to the safety and integrity of industrial and supply chains. Some multinational enterprises have accelerated the adjustment of their industrial chain layout after the outbreak of the pandemic, making it more diversified and regional, leading to an increase in risk aversion and psychological expectations among international investors, resulting in a significant decline in direct investment in China. At this time, based on a series of laws on Sino foreign joint ventures and foreign investment, we continue to optimize policy arrangements, attract and utilize foreign investment with greater efforts, expand market access, increase openness in the modern service industry, and strengthen the implementation of the principle of national treatment, which can effectively avoid the "herd effect".
3、 From a policy perspective, fully implement the policy opinions on attracting foreign investment
In the face of the declining trend of foreign investment, it is necessary to identify and analyze the reasons, and the key is to alleviate the concerns of foreign investment. A good environment for attracting foreign investment has been achieved through decades of hard work, and it is necessary to continue to implement national treatment for foreign-funded enterprises and provide good services for them. According to the principle of competition neutrality, we will treat all types of ownership enterprises equally, address issues such as tax incentives, cross-border data transmission, and research and development support, focus on fair competition rules, implement national treatment for foreign-funded enterprises, provide good services for foreign-funded enterprises, and promote the landing and construction of landmark foreign-funded projects.
Highly valuing the role of foreign investment and vigorously attracting and utilizing foreign investment has been an important experience of China's economic and social development over the past 40 years of reform and opening up. Provide new impetus for reform through opening up, and promote the construction of a high-level socialist market economy system. In the context of sluggish and even shrinking globalization, effective measures need to be taken to prevent China's position in the global industrial chain from gradually weakening, and to resolve the significant pressure of foreign trade industry chain transfer. To this end, we must firmly promote high-level opening up to the outside world, and create a market-oriented, rule of law, and internationalized excellent business environment. Creating a favorable business environment for enterprises in various countries, treating domestic and foreign entrepreneurs equally, will effectively promote China's economic development, and is also the best response to the country's "decoupling and chain breaking" plan. Actively promote the accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, and timely facilitate the early implementation of the China Europe Comprehensive Investment Agreement. If the above agreement is reached, it will not only facilitate the introduction of advanced international technology and management experience, but also facilitate domestic enterprises to "go global", expand international investment, and reduce the national security review constraints that Chinese enterprises may encounter when acquiring foreign enterprises.
4、 Systematically strengthen the protection mechanism for foreign investment
Today, the attractiveness of a country's socio-economic development to foreign investment is increasingly reflected in the attractiveness of rules and systems. Therefore, in accordance with the principle of competition neutrality, all types of ownership enterprises should be treated equally, the national treatment of foreign-invested enterprises should be guaranteed, and a sound mechanism for protecting the rights and interests of foreign investment should be established.
One is to continuously improve the open and transparent foreign-related legal system, and comprehensively and deeply implement the pre admission national treatment plus negative list management system. All types of enterprises registered within China shall be treated equally and equally, and the legitimate rights and interests of foreign-funded enterprises shall be protected in accordance with the law. We shall resolutely punish acts that infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors, especially intellectual property rights, in accordance with the law. Improve the quality and efficiency of intellectual property review, introduce a punitive compensation system, significantly increase the cost of illegal activities, strengthen administrative protection of intellectual property, improve the level of investment and operation convenience, and increase financial and tax support.
The second is to continuously optimize entry and exit policies and measures, provide convenience for foreign executives, technical personnel, and their families of foreign-invested enterprises to enter and exit, and facilitate international personnel mobility, such as visa facilitation. Under the premise of balancing economic freedom and national security, to solve the problem of cross-border data transmission, it is necessary to establish green channels for qualified foreign-invested enterprises, efficiently carry out security assessments of important data and personal information exiting the country, and promote the orderly and free flow of data security.
The third is to build a mechanism and development environment to attract outstanding talents. Behind international competition lies talent competition, and we should have the awareness of "gathering talents from all over the world and using them" to attract outstanding talents from all over the world, including domestic talents. Examining the population structure of the United States, it can be found that in some technologically advanced economic regions, the proportion of foreign population is high. For example, about 40% of the population in the New York Bay Area and San Francisco Bay Area are foreigners, and the proportion of foreigners in Silicon Valley reaches about 60%. Two thirds of Silicon Valley's unicorn businesses are founded by first and second generation immigrants. Most high-tech developments can be said to be "made in the United States," but by no means "made in the United States," they are made by global talent.
The fourth is that the pilot free trade zone takes the lead in connecting with international high standard economic and trade rules. Actively creating conditions, benchmarking the rules, regulations, and standards of CPTPP and DEPA through RCEP and the 10+1 mechanism between China and ASEAN, relaxing market access for the service industry, orderly promoting the process of cross-border service trade opening, improving the standardization level of service trade, steadily expanding institutional openness, implementing national treatment for foreign-funded enterprises, and creating a first-class business environment that is market-oriented, legal, and internationalized.
