Recently, Chen Min’er, Secretary of CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee and head of the city’s leading group for active engagement in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to speed up building an exemplary opening-up city in inland China chaired the leading group meeting.

He stressed the need to thoroughly study and implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important statement on opening-up and his important speeches when inspecting Chongqing. The emphasis should be laid on planning Chongqing’s development in big-picture terms and serving the overall situation in mind. Apart from that, efforts should be made to better serve national strategies, support the development of Chongqing, seize every opportunity for development, and strength the responsibility, thus making fresh progress in the construction of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor (ILSTC), pushing forward the establishment of an inland international financial center, and accelerating the cultivation of new advantages in opening-up in inland China.

At the meeting, the Implementation Plan for Chongqing to Promote the Construction of New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor was considered, and efforts to build the inland international financial center were discussed.

The significance of ILSTC

Chen Min’er pointed out in his speech that, the construction of the ILSTC is of great significance to co-building the BRI, and promoting the formation of a new pattern for the Western Development Strategy and the construction of Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle. By maximizing the golden time for strategic development, it entails seizing the major opportunity to expand the global supply chain, strengthening cooperation with ASEAN countries and regions, and making the most of favorable policies for the state’s attempts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, in an effort to make new progress in the construction of the ILSTC and achieve the interlocking result of the ILSTC driving logistics, economy, and trade, and finally industries.

By giving better play to the role of the corridor, it is necessary to accelerate the ILSTC logistics and operation organization center, promote the in-depth integration of transportation, logistics, commerce and trade, and industries, strengthen the capacity building of the corridor, enhance the transport scale and the efficiency of multimodal transport, further the connectivity of infrastructure, and promote the radiating role, so as to stimulate the flow of people, materials, capital, and information and build an inland international logistics hub.

It is also of great importance to speed up formulating major projects, building open platforms, and developing new policies and measures, thus producing more tangible and representative results.

Building an inland international financial center

Chen Min’er highlighted that building an inland international financial center is a practical need to serve national strategies and an inevitable demand for promoting Chongqing’s high-quality development. Having a thorough understanding of building the inland international financial center, it requires to focus on local advantages to serve western China, and make full use of domestic and international markets and their resources, in a bid to build a financial center with the capability to allocate international financial resources, radiation, and influence.

Other attempts are necessary to make the financial industry better and stronger, by the likes of actively promoting the emergence of various financial institutions and factor markets, fostering the agglomeration of special financial institutions, supporting financial institutions to set up their functional headquarters, regional headquarters, settlement centers, and business management centers in Chongqing, and continuously improving special functions of local factor markets to enhance the influence of regional factor markets in agglomeration and radiation. It is of necessity to enhance financial opening-up, deepen financial cooperation under the China-Singapore (Chongqing) Demonstration Initiative on Strategic Connectivity, and foster a point-to-point financial docking mode between Chongqing and Singapore to cultivate a new financial opening-up pattern of face-to-face cooperation between western China and ASEAN.

It is also necessary to make good use of platforms such as the free trade pilot zone, actively participate in domestic and foreign financial cooperation, and deepen regional financial cooperation. Efforts should be made to accelerate financial reform and innovation, encourage and support various financial institutions and market entities to boost the innovation in technology, product and management, and constantly develop new financial products, financial formats, and financial services. Chongqing should expedite the construction of fintech, support a diversity of financial institutions to apply new technologies, such as the internet, cloud computing, big data, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, and propel national pilot projects for the application of fintech and innovation in financial standardization. Chongqing should create a good financial ecosystem, further the integrated construction of the social credit system, perfect the financial supporting service system, step up efforts in holding China-Singapore (Chongqing) Connectivity Initiative Financial Summit and other crucial forum activities, and maintain the sound and steady development of the financial market.

Leaders attended the meeting include Tang Liangzhi, Deputy Secretary of CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee, Mayor of Chongqing and head of the leading group, Zhang Xuan, Director of the Standing Committee of Chongqing Municipal People’s Congress and deputy head of the leading group, and Wang Jiong, Chairman of CPPCC Chongqing Municipal Committee. Members of the leading group and heads of relevant municipal departments also attended the meeting.