General

Expanding the global network of high standard free trade zones is an important strategic measure to build a powerful trading country and promote the high-quality development of foreign trade. Relying on the super large-scale market, attracting global advantageous production factors, helping enterprises to climb the global value chain, and cultivating new advantages in international trade competition will provide strong support for the "big trading country" to become a "powerful trading country".

Promoting the construction of a powerful trading country is not only the proper meaning of building a modern economic system, but also the inevitable requirement of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. Since the reform and opening up, with the effective use of the external market and based on the inherent advantages of low labor costs, China has firmly grasped the strategic opportunity for the outward transfer of labor-intensive industries in developed countries, and export trade has become an important force to promote rapid economic growth.

After the outbreak of the international financial crisis in 2008, on the one hand, the economy of developed countries entered a stage of deep adjustment, and the growth rate of external demand faced by China's exports slowed down; On the other hand, with the rapid development of China's economy, the cost of labor and other factors of production in China has risen rapidly. Emerging economies such as ASEAN and other developing countries have actively participated in the international division of labor by virtue of their labor costs and comparative advantages in natural resources. Industries and orders have been transferred to China's peripheral countries, leading to the intensification of China's export competition. Under the new situation, it is inevitable that China's foreign trade will shift from quantity growth to quality improvement. This requires, on the one hand, adhering to the internal deepening of reform, accelerating the upgrading of the industrial chain and the rise of the value chain, and cultivating new advantages in international trade; On the other hand, it is particularly important to adhere to the expansion of high-level opening-up, including improving the quality of import and export products, improving the level of trade facilitation in goods, actively participating in the formulation of trade in services rules, further easing the access of foreign investment, and comprehensively strengthening economic and technological cooperation. These are also the proper meaning of accelerating the construction of a high standard free trade area network.

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed that "we should accelerate the implementation of the free trade zone strategy based on the surrounding areas and form a global high standard free trade zone network". The construction of a high standard free trade area network means that it is necessary to carry out liberalization and facilitation cooperation with more economies in the fields of trade and investment, and promote bilateral or regional free and smooth trade and two-way investment facilitation by rules such as tariff concessions, customs clearance facilitation and national treatment, so as to eliminate various trade and non trade barriers and tap the potential of economic and trade cooperation. Accelerating the construction of a high standard free trade area network is not only the objective requirement of adapting to the new trends and challenges of economic globalization, but also the inevitable choice for us to promote the high-quality development of foreign trade. The global network of high standard free trade zones will help build an economic and technological cooperation platform based on the surrounding areas and radiating countries along the "belt and road", making cooperation closer, exchanges more convenient and interests more integrated.

To build a high standard free trade area network, we need to explore boldly, keep pace with the times, actively expand the opening of the service industry, and speed up the negotiation of new issues. These are also important starting points for China to actively participate in the formulation of international trade and economic rules and strive for the institutional power of global economic governance, which will help China to enhance the international competitiveness of domestic enterprises and industries through the construction of free trade zones, and give more Chinese voice and inject more Chinese elements into the formulation of international rules. China can speed up the construction of a high standard free trade area network from the following three aspects:

First, promote the optimization and upgrading of trade in goods. Taking the free trade zone network as the window, relying on the scale effect of China's super market and its strong consumption potential, we will attract the full inflow of global advantageous production factors and high-quality foreign capital. At the same time, internal innovation and learning and introduction should be carried out at the same time to accelerate the cultivation of new advantages in the internal market, encourage enterprises to actively climb to the top of the global value chain, advocate international production capacity cooperation among enterprises, gradually change the traditional trade mode of "big in and big out" into "excellent in and excellent out", and build a global high standard free trade area network.

Second, innovate the development mechanism of service trade. Service trade is an important part of China's foreign trade and an important field of international economic and technological cooperation, and plays an important role in improving the quality of foreign trade. Building a high standard free trade area network requires accelerating the establishment of fair, open and transparent market rules for trade in services, and accelerating the implementation of the negative list of cross-border trade in services. In this process, we should expand the field of service trade cooperation, tap the potential of cooperation, optimize the structure of service trade, improve the competitiveness of international trade in services, create a good business environment, and improve the quality of foreign trade development.

Third, develop digital trade. Accelerate the construction of digital infrastructure. Massive digital production factors will become an important factor endowment in China's digital trade by virtue of digital infrastructure, and then expand the network scope of Digital Trade and enrich the types of transactions. Accelerate the integration of digital technology and industry. Industrial digitalization and digital industrialization help to improve the production efficiency and management ability of enterprises, and help enterprises form new advantages, occupy more shares and obtain higher profits in international trade competition. Foster new formats of digital economy. The development of digital technology will stimulate the innovation of business model and business organization. Many business types will disappear due to the innovation of digital technology or the improvement of digital level, but at the same time, more new trade types will be born. Therefore, with the development of digital economy, vigorously cultivating and promoting the development of digital trade will help to further promote the high-quality development of foreign trade.