Professor Wang Luolin, Ad Hoc Consultant and Former Executive Vice President of the Chinese Academy

of Social Sciences: Sufficient Attention Must Be Paid to the Promotion of the Role of the Opening up Policy to the Comprehensive Deepening Reform

The previous speeches are very enlightening. I want to make some supplement to Professor Zhang Yansheng's speech. I am thinking about an issue, which is related to the effect of international economy change on our foreign trade. Now, China's economy has been deeply involved into the international economic system. The report is well written; however, there is only one of the ten policies that is about opening to the outside world. Should it be enhanced? Opening to the outside world has played a great role in both development and reform of our economy. Reviewing the past 35 years since the Third Plenary Session of the Chinese eleventh CPC Central Committee, we had generally experienced three climaxes of reform and opening up. Suppose the current reform is the fourth one, how much impact do they have on our whole macroeconomy? Take One Belt and One Road as an instance; it has two direct effects on our economy. One is promoting the China Western Development, and the other one is helping some countries in Central Asia and West Asia to build the infrastructures and it can drive our iron and steel production at the same time. What influences will these strategies, policies, and measures of the opening to the outside world have on our macroeconomy during the current and coming period?

Professor Zhang Yansheng said that the foreign exchange reserve might not grow so substantially in the future. One reason is that I heard the central government plans to take a piece of foreign exchange reserve for outbound investment. So opening to the outside world makes China integrate into the international economic system with a greater extent. If we use it to promote the reform, could it be studied with more effort?

For decades, opening is often faster than reform because opening is easier and offends less vested interests than reform; furthermore, opening can boost reform. So we should consider opening when studying on the macroeconomy. It is difficult to calculate, but we should make efforts to achieve it, for the development of the situation is not allowed to only consider the domestic situation.

These are my suggestions