WangDi

On the morning of April 10th, the 2018 annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia officially opened in Boao, Hainan, with the theme "An Open and Innovative Asia for a World of Greater Prosperity". The forum attracted more than 2,000 delegates from 63 countries including heads of state and international organizations, politicians, businessmen, experts and scholars in different fields.

The keynote speech delivered by President Xi Jinping at the opening ceremony, which is titled "Openness for Greater Prosperity, Innovation for a Better Future", focused on the common development and progress of China and the world, declared solemnly China's firm determination to expand opening-up, setting a good example for the world to follow the trend of our times and advance the well-being of all people.

President Xi pointed out that China has grown into the world's second largest economy, the largest industrial producer, the largest trader of goods, and the holder of the largest foreign exchange reserves. Over the past 40 years, China's GDP has averaged an annual growth rate of around 9.5 percent in comparable prices and its foreign trade has registered an annual growth of 14.5 percent in US dollar. The speech profoundly summed up the great achievements, valuable experience of China's reform and opening-up, and its positive contributions to the world in the past 40 years, highlighting the great power of guiding vision, institutional guarantee and the strength of the 1.3 billion Chinese people driving history forward.

At the opening ceremony, president Xi has announced a series of important new measures to expand opening-up, promising to ease market access, improve investment environment, enhance IPR protection, and take the initiative to expand imports. These measures were made in line with China's own development needs, timetable and roadmap, based on its consistent policy proposals. China will implement these measures as soon as possible so that the outcomes of our opening-up efforts will deliver benefits to all enterprises and people in China and around the world in the near future.

The world is undergoing a new round of major development, great change and profound readjustment. Humankind still faces many instabilities and uncertainties. A comprehensive study of world development trajectories shows that economic globalization is an irreversible trend of our times, that openness and innovation are of great significance for the common development of the world. The "Belt and Road Initiative" and other series of Chinese programs are aimed at promoting the construction of an open world economy with practical actions and making economic globalization more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all.

Reform policy

For 40 years, China's policy of reform and opening-up has been consistent, during which China has completed the transformation from "world factory" to "world market" and is marching from "a manufacturer" toward "a creator". These achievements prove that opening-up was key to China's economic growth and in the same vein, high-quality development of China's economy in the future can only be achieved with greater openness. "China's door of opening-up will not be closed and will only open even wider!"

In recent years, pragmatic cooperation between China and Kuwait has yielded fruitful results. China is currently Kuwait's largest source of imports and the sixth largest export of non-oil products. The volume of trade between the two countries in 2017 has reached $12.04 billion with year-on-year growth of 28.5 percent. Kuwait is one of the most important crude oil suppliers for China. In 2017, China imported 18.24 million tons of crude oil from Kuwait, with 11.6 percent of year-on-year growth, worth $7.05 billion. China has implemented 80 contracting projects in Kuwait, covering oil field services, exploration, refining, housing, infrastructure, telecommunications and other fields, with a total contract value of $14.858 billion.

Under the new situation of China's expanding opening-up, China and Kuwait will embrace a brighter future of their joint-construction of the "Belt and Road".

China would like to share the fruits of China's reform, opening-up and development with Kuwait and is willing to use Kuwait's "Silk City and Five Islands" project as a joint point for the "Belt and Road" cooperation between the two countries to support Kuwait's economic restructuring. In the next stage, both China and Kuwait should continue to dedicate themselves to openness and win-win outcomes, jointly implement relevant cooperation documents of "Belt and Road", further strengthen bilateral pragmatic cooperation and strategic cooperation, promote the building of an open global economy with practical actions, making outcomes of opening-up benefit the two peoples as soon as possible.

By WangDi

Ambassador of the People's Republic of China

to the State of Kuwait