Shanghai should turn free-trade zone into global channel, Xi Jinping says
The market experiment in Pudong district must become an example for other zones in the nation, president says
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Sunday urged Shanghai to turn its free-trade zone (FTZ) into a bridgehead for the “One Belt, One Road” initiative and help domestic companies channel investment overseas.
Speaking at the Shanghai delegation meeting on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, Xi said the city should turn the area in Pudong into a “comprehensive reform experiment zone” that integrates opening up and innovation, Xinhua reported.
“Shanghai must take the advantage of an early start and be the first one to set up a system that is in line with international investment and trade rules,” Xi said.
Under its belt plan, Beijing hopes to create a new trade network stretching from Southeast Asia to Europe, through funding infrastructure projects and investment.
Shanghai’s FTZ was “a strategic move to deepen reform and expand opening up”, Xi said, adding it should make “breakthroughs to play an example role”.
“[We] will stick to overall opening up and continue to advance free and convenient trade and investment,” he said.
China launched the free-trade zone in Shanghai in late 2013 as a test bed for full convertibility of China’s currency and a market-based interest rate mechanism.
Two years later, three more zones – in Guangdong, Fujian and Tianjin – were approved. The number of the FTZs expanded again last year with seven inland provinces receiving approval to set up the zones.
It remains to be seen how successful the zones will become. The Shanghai Free Trade Zone is coming into the fourth year but the promises to pilot a freer capital account have largely fallen below market expectations.
Xi also urged Shanghai to realise new achievements in urban management and create a new way of governing the “super big city”, or city with more than 10 million people, within the framework of mainland law.
