On March 5, Premier Li Qiang submitted the Government Work Report (GWR) to the National People’s Congress.

Meanwhile, the world is changing rapidly, and China must cope with increasingly complex and severe external challenges. Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has been ferocious in launching global trade wars and technology wars, which have dealt a severe blow to the development of the world’s trade and economy and will also slow down the economic recovery of countries around the world. Although many countries, including US allies, have also become targets of United States’ crackdowns, Washington’s containment of China has been particularly fierce. In addition to taking action unilaterally, the US also uses coercion and inducement to compel its allies and partners to cooperate  in adopting containment measures against China.

However, over the past decade, Beijing has been aware of the escalating US suppression of China and has actively made comprehensive deployments to cope with it. In response to these hostile actions, China will inevitably respond with force and precision, making Washington pay a heavy price, damaging the interests of Trump’s supporters, and impeding the development of cutting-edge technology in the US.

However, as far as China’s development and national rejuvenation are concerned, a more effective response strategy is to increase opening-up, expand a broader space for international economic activities outside the US and its allies, significantly enlarge the nation’s overseas markets, and allow more Chinese goods, capital and services to “go out”. Therefore, the GWR emphasizes the need to “broaden the space for international cooperation while expanding opening up”. At the same time, the global economic war launched by the US and its increasingly fierce trade protectionism will, to a certain extent, prompt many to urgently strengthen economic cooperation with other countries, making it possible for China’s strategy of expanding its space for international economic activities to be more effectively implemented and achieve results.

In the GWR, Li gave an objective, succinct, and precise description of the complex and severe international environment facing China. He pointed out: “From an international perspective, the world’s century-old changes are accelerating, and the external environment is becoming more complex and severe, which may have a greater impact on China’s trade, science and technology, and other fields. The world’s economic growth momentum is insufficient, unilateralism and protectionism are intensifying, the multilateral trading system is blocked, and tariff barriers are increasing, impacting the stability of the global industrial chain and supply chain and disrupting the international economic cycle. Many geopolitical tensions still affect global market expectations and investment confidence and increase the risk of volatility in the international market.”

The Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization, adopted on July 18, 2024, formulated China’s policies and arrangements for dealing with the hostile and turbulent international environment.

On the one hand, this year’s GWR showcases the achievements made in implementing the resolution and, more importantly, sets out the work that needs to be done. Several of these tasks are particularly important.

As the US and its allies continue to attempt to contain China and its HKSAR at the same time, Hong Kong must make better use of its unique advantages under the “one country, two systems” principle to help the motherland deepen its grand strategy of reform and opening-up, and make new contributions to Hong Kong itself as well as national modernization and rejuvenation

The first thing is to continue expanding high-level opening-up, and actively stabilize foreign trade. The GWR emphasizes that “no matter how the external environment changes, we must always remain resolute in opening up to the outside world, steadily expand institutional opening-up, expand independent and unilateral opening-up in an orderly fashion and use opening-up to promote reform and development”.

The priorities in this regard include supporting companies in stabilizing orders and expanding overseas markets; strengthening support for companies to participate in and hold exhibitions abroad; supporting places with appropriate conditions to develop new types of offshore trade; and promoting intelligent customs construction and cooperation to improve the level of customs clearance facilitation.

The second is to vigorously encourage foreign investment, including promoting comprehensive pilot demonstration for expanding the opening up of the service industry, promoting orderly opening-up in areas such as the internet and culture; expanding pilot opening-up in areas such as telecommunications, medical care, and education; encouraging foreign investors to expand reinvestment, and supporting participation in upstream and downstream support and collaboration in the industrial chain; ensuring that foreign-invested enterprises receive national treatment in terms of factor acquisition, qualification recognition, standard setting, and government procurement; strengthening service guarantees for foreign-invested enterprises and accelerating the implementation of landmark projects; continuing to build the “Invest in China” brand; and continuing to create a first-class business environment that is market-oriented, rule-of-law-based, and internationalized, so that foreign-invested enterprises can get better development opportunities.

The third is to promote high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), including coordinating the construction of significant landmark projects and “small and beautiful” livelihood projects, achieving several exemplary cooperation results, and strengthening the international community’s confidence and support for the BRI.

The fourth is to deepen multilateral, bilateral and regional economic cooperation, including promoting the signing of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area 3.0 upgraded agreement and actively promoting the process of joining the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. China will firmly safeguard the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core, expand the convergence of interests with other countries, and promote common development.

The fifth is to attract foreign talent and thus comprehensively improve the quality of the talent pool. Measures include improving the support and guarantee mechanisms for overseas talent and optimizing foreign talent services.

The GWR points out that over the past year, China’s strategy of expanding opening-up has achieved many results, including actively expanding foreign trade growth points, continuously optimizing import and export settlements, and increasing the contribution of foreign trade exports to economic growth.

China has fully implemented the negative list for cross-border service trade and launched pilot projects in value-added telecommunications, biotechnology, and wholly-owned hospitals.

China has increased its unilateral opening-up efforts and granted zero tariff treatment to all products from the least developed countries that have established diplomatic relations with China.

China has expanded the scope of unilateral visa-free countries and extended the transit visa-free stay period to 240 hours, and inbound tourism continues to heat up. The high-quality joint construction of the BRI has achieved remarkable results, and several significant projects and people’s livelihood projects have been steadily implemented. In the future, as the strategy of expanding opening-up is gradually implemented, China’s economic development will continue to achieve good results, notwithstanding the US’ containment, especially in attracting foreign investment and maintaining decent economic growth.

The GWR also calls for Hong Kong to “deepen international exchanges and cooperation”. Hong Kong should use its extensive international connections, systems in line with international standards, and deep international talent pool to open up space for international economic cooperation for itself and the country. Similar demands were made at the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and by President Xi Jinping last year. This is one of the essential tasks entrusted to Hong Kong by the country in the new stage of the “one country, two systems” principle. The city can play an active role in attracting foreign investment, assisting Chinese mainland enterprises to develop overseas markets, internationalizing the yuan, building the BRI, promoting the globalization of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, building an international talent base, establishing an international legal mediation center, telling the country’s story well to the outside world, and trumpeting economic globalization.

As the US and its allies continue to attempt to contain China and its HKSAR at the same time, Hong Kong must make better use of its unique advantages under the “one country, two systems” principle to help the motherland deepen its grand strategy of reform and opening-up, and make new contributions to Hong Kong itself as well as national modernization and rejuvenation.

The author is a professor emeritus of sociology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a consultant for the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.