This photo taken on Oct 31, 2023 shows the south square of the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai), the main venue for the 6th China International Import Expo, in East China's Shanghai. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

BEIJING - Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a letter to the sixth China International Import Expo, which opened in Shanghai on Sunday.

First held in 2018, the annual expo has leveraged the strengths of China's enormous market, fulfilled its platform function for international procurement, investment promotion, people-to-people exchanges and open cooperation, and made positive contribution to creating a new development pattern and promoting world economic development, Xi said in the letter.

Xi said he hopes the CIIE will better serve as a window for fostering a new development pattern that creates new opportunities for the world through China's further development

Noting that the world economic recovery lacks momentum, Xi said China will always be an important opportunity for global development.

He pledged that China will firmly advance high-standard opening-up and continue to make economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all. 

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Xi said he hopes the CIIE will better serve as a window for fostering a new development pattern that creates new opportunities for the world through China's further development, and as a platform of high-standard opening-up that allows China's enormous market to be shared by the world.

He also expressed hope that the expo will play a greater role in providing shared international public goods and services that facilitate an open world economy and let the world benefit from win-win cooperation.

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This year's expo, scheduled from Nov 5 to 10, has set a new record with 289 Global Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders in attendance. Over 3,400 exhibitors and 394,000 professional visitors registered for the event, a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels.

Capitalizing on China's vast market opportunities, participants have come to Shanghai from 154 countries, regions and international organizations, including the least developed, developing and developed nations.