On October 22, 2019, the conference for accelerating its paces to pioneer in opening-up in inland China and serve the Belt and Road took place in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. The conference witnessed the issuance of the Action Plan for Chongqing to Pioneer in Opening-Up in Inland China and Serve the Belt and Road. It points out the goal that by 2022, Chongqing should take the lead in China’s central and western regions in terms of investment trade, industrial development, functions, and supporting facilities, and agglomeration and radiation, and it will usher in the new stage of pioneering in opening-up in inland China and serve the Belt and Road.

To realize that goal, the Action Plan takes the channels, platforms, ports, market, and environment as the leverage. How will this five-aspect action plan work, and what changes will it bring to Chongqing during its commitment to pioneer in opening-up in inland China?

Expanding channels for opening up to support the inland international logistics hub construction

Channels for opening up are an indispensable foundation and support to opening up. This part highlights the development of broad channels, accelerating and optimizing comprehensive international logistics network, promoting the construction of channels to other provinces and foreign countries in an all-dimensional way, exploring a sustainable development mechanism for building channels for opening up, and striving to develop channel economy, hub economy and the support for international logistics hub in inland China.

By 2022, Chongqing is targeted to realize the total international logistics volume of over 12 million tons and the entire container throughput of 2 million TEUs through these channels.

Specifically, Chongqing will first optimize the system of channels toward the four directions. Second, Chongqing will build the multimodal transport system by combing railway, road, water, and air. Furthermore, it will rely on the four hubs of Tuanjie Village, Jiangbei International Airport, Guoyuan Port, and Nanpeng Highway Logistics Base to carry out international procurement, distribution, transit, and settlement of import and export goods. It will also build a global logistics distribution center in inland China combining the functions of storage, distribution, collection & allocation, trans-shipment, connection, and simple processing, thus forming a build-up effect with the channel logistics.

Upgrading opening-up platforms to build an international hub city

The platform is the core carrier for Chongqing to pioneer in opening-up in inland China. In the action of upgrading open platforms, it will focus on the development of large platforms, boost the upgrading and coordination of various platforms, optimize the allocation of resources, improve the quality of operation, and form an aggregation effect, to accelerate the construction of an international hub city.

The goal is that by 2022, the total import and export volume and the foreign investment in the actual use of open platforms will account for 80% of the total amount of the city, respectively.

First, it is essential to facilitate the formation of a new pattern of open platforms for the modern era. The second is to give further play to the leading role of key open platforms. The third is to advance the coordinated development of open platforms. 

Specifically, Liangjiang New Area serves as a key gateway for the opening-up in inland China. CFTZ ought to take institutional innovation as the core, continue to take the lead, and carry out pioneering and differentiated reform exploration to achieve more institutional innovation results that can be copied and popularized. The city should implement the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity (CCI) at a high standard, continue to improve the operational mechanism of CCI, and actively innovate in institutional mechanisms and business model. At the same time, the city will further integrate and optimize the functions of customs special supervision areas and bonded supervision places, and further promote the innovative development of national development zones.

Improving open ports to promote the interactive development between ports and industries

Port is the “gateway” for opening up to the outside world, especially for foreign trade.

The goal is to preliminarily build Chongqing into a port pioneer with a “complete port system, complete functions, and supporting facilities, high clearance efficiency, excellent service environment, and strong agglomeration and radiation” by 2022, and strive to open up five ports in Chongqing.

The first part of the action is to optimize the port layout and add ports opened to outside. The second part is to improve port services. The last part is to improve the port level.

Moreover, Chongqing will take moves to deepen international and domestic customs clearance cooperation, such as implementing national customs clearance integration, increasing the cooperation in customs clearance between inland areas and coastal and border areas, focusing on the construction of China Railway Express (Chongqing) and ILSTC, taking full advantage of cooperation projects such as China-EU AEO recognition, China-Singapore AEO recognition and EU – China Smart and Secure Trade Lanes (SSTL) to explore a mechanism for international customs clearance cooperation in information exchange, mutual recognition of supervision and mutual assistance in law enforcement, strengthening the connectivity with neighboring countries and regions to promote coordination of standards and scopes of cross-border transport such as railways, and strengthening the connection of international transport rules to encourage the “one-stop” transport of goods with ASEAN.

Fostering open market entities to develop a high-level open economy

The degree of openness is closely tied to the industry. In the action of fostering open market entities, Chongqing will play a decisive role of the market in resource allocation and pay equal attention to “bringing in” and “going global.”

The goal is to see Chongqing featuring over 300 enterprises listed among the Fortune Global 500 and 30 overseas listed companies by 2022.

The first part of the action is to promote the high-quality development of an open economy. The second is to cultivate new support industries for an open economy, including the open manufacturing industry focusing on intelligent manufacturing. The Action Plan also clearly calls for greater openness in cultural tourism and agriculture. Third, the city will further expand and strengthen various market entities. By 2022, the city will commit itself to introduce more than 30 projects of over RMB 1 billion per year. Another essential part of the action of fostering open market entities is to propel international and domestic cooperation.

Optimizing open environment to build an international exchange center in central and western China

Considering the significance of optimizing the open environment, Chongqing will take the construction of an international first-class business environment as a foundation work to pioneer in opening-up in inland China and serve the Belt and Road.

It will firmly establish a concept of “everyone stands for opening-up and everywhere embraces the open environment,” hammer at improving the quality of its software and hardware facilities, and further the improvement of urban international comprehensive service functions. It aims at building itself into a foreign exchange center in central and western China.

The first step of optimizing an open environment is to propel the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment. Second, the city will deepen the reform of the management system of foreign investment and investments abroad, expand market access for foreign investment in a broader range of areas, implement high-level investment facilitation policies and increase the level of investment liberalization. Improving the environment for government affairs is also essential for optimizing the open environment. Improving the environment for government affairs is also critical to maximizing an open environment.

At the same time, Chongqing will strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, strictly protect the intellectual property rights of foreign-invested enterprises following the law, establish a unified trial mechanism for civil, criminal, and administrative cases of intellectual property, and strengthen international cooperation in intellectual property protection.

Building an international urban living environment is also a crucial step. Next, the city will strengthen the construction of public service facilities, optimize the urban cultural tourism environment, enhance the development of the ecological environment, and consolidate the social service security system.