China’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the country’s vast economy, mature industrial ecosystem and growing middle class mean that it’s a market foreign investors cannot abandon. In 2024, China will continue to promote high-level opening-up so as to share with the world new opportunities brought by the country’s modernization.
At a routine press briefing, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson of the ministry, noted that in 2023, China’s economy sustained the momentum of recovery despite external pressure and achieved solid progress in high-quality development. Wang said that relevant international institutions projected China’s economic growth rate in 2023 to be around 5.2 percent, holding the lead among major economies and continuing to be the largest engine for global growth.
During the just-concluded New Year’s Day holidays, there were 135 million domestic tourism trips, up 9.4 percent from the same period in 2019 before the pandemic. Domestic tourism revenue reached 79.73 billion yuan ($11.22 billion), up 5.6 percent from 2019, according to Wang.
The consumer boom during the holidays, with bustling travel and spending, offered a vivid display of sustained vitality and vast potential in China’s consumption market, the biggest driver for economic growth, analysts said.
The lively holiday scenes were very positive signs for the recovery of the tourism sector and consumption, and positive signs that 2024 is off to a solid start, Li Chang’an, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, told the Global Times.
“The facts show that China’s economy is stable and improving, and the fundamentals of long-term improvement have not changed. The international community’s confidence in China’s economy this year continues to grow,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang said.
“Several international media outlets commented that China’s large economic size, mature industrial ecosystem and rising middle class mean it is a market hard to give up,” the spokesperson said.
In 2024, China will continue to promote high-level opening-up, expand market access and build a world-class business environment, so as to share with the world new opportunities brought by Chinese modernization, the spokesperson said.
“China will remain an important engine driving world economic growth. In a world battling economic uncertainties, China is a source of certainty and positive energy,” he said.
At the Central Economic Work Conference held in December, which set economic priorities for 2024, expanding high-standard opening-up was also listed as a top priority for economic work.
Specifically, efforts should be made to foster new drivers of foreign trade, consolidate the overall performance of foreign trade and foreign capital, and expand the intermediate goods trade, services trade, digital trade and cross-border e-commerce exports, according to the meeting.
(Global Times)
