By Global Times
China will expand market access and open up more areas, particularly in the services sector, according to a Government Work Report submitted on Thursday to the country's top legislature for deliberation.
Specifically, the country will further expand opening-up trials for value-added telecom services, biotechnology, wholly foreign-owned hospitals, and other fields, take well-ordered steps to expand opening-up in the digital sector, and shorten the negative list for cross-border trade in services, the report said.
Brief as it is, the passage is rich in information. The emphasis on expanding market access in the services sector sends a strong signal that China is making a significant leap, from opening up its manufacturing sector to pursuing a higher level of institutional opening-up in services.
For a long time, China's opening-up achievements have been centered primarily on manufacturing. From establishing special economic zones to joining the World Trade Organization, and ultimately removing all market access restrictions for foreign investors in the manufacturing sector, these sustained efforts have yielded a high degree of openness, establishing China as a global manufacturing powerhouse.
And now, opening-up in the services sector is picking up pace. Although it now accounts for 57.7 percent of China's GDP and plays an increasingly vital role, there remains huge potential for development. Expanding market access to attract more sophisticated international services providers would not only meet rising domestic consumption demand but also help drive improvements in quality and efficiency in the domestic industry.
The three specific sectors highlighted in the Government Work Report - value-added telecom services, biotechnology, and wholly foreign-owned hospitals - perfectly illustrate this logic. All are technology-intensive, knowledge-intensive, and subject to stringent regulation. When foreign capital enters these sectors, it brings not just investment but internationally recognized technical standards, management practices, and services models that will catalyze comprehensive upgrading across related industries.
From the perspective of domestic industry development, expanding opening-up in the services sector is a requirement for promoting high-quality development. Opening up services, particularly producer services such as research and development, design, and other management functions, can enhance efficiency and help manufacturing move up the global value chain.
Meanwhile, opening up consumer services such as healthcare, eldercare, and education directly addresses people's diverse needs for a better life. The competitive pressure generated by opening-up will accelerate technological innovation and management transformation among domestic enterprises, ultimately improving total factor productivity.
The commitment to shortening "the negative list for cross-border trade in services" provides the essential institutional framework for achieving these goals. The negative list embodies international high-standard trade and investment rules, granting market entities maximum freedom and certainty.
Continuously shortening this list means progressively reducing restrictions on foreign investment while making rules more transparent and streamlined. For both Chinese and foreign enterprises, a stable, predictable, and transparent business environment holds great appeal these days amid rising unilateralism and protectionism overseas.
Amid the current international situation, the significance of these opening-up measures becomes even clearer. Amid a weak global economic recovery and rising protectionism, China remains committed to its fundamental state policy of opening-up, taking concrete actions to safeguard the stability of global industrial and supply chains. This policy not only fuels its own development but also provides valuable support for building an open world economy.
The opening-up measures outlined in the Government Work Report send a clear message to the world: China's economic progress is built on openness, continuous self-improvement, and an enterprising embrace of the global community, moving forward without resorting to protectionism. From opening-up in the manufacturing sector to services opening-up, China is pursuing a higher level of institutional openness. By integrating more deeply into the global economy, it is achieving its own high-quality development while injecting sustained momentum into global economic growth.
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China's economic growth target for 2026 is proactive and pragmatic, reflecting a broad assessment of domestic conditions and shifts in the external environment.
The 15th Five-Year Plan marks a pivotal stretch in China's modernization drive, and its ambitions reach well beyond domestic growth metrics. By directing capital into frontier technologies, deepening trade and investment linkages, and advancing green development, the blueprint is poised to affect the global economy across multiple dimensions, from the tempo of the energy transition to the landscape of advanced manufacturing worldwide.
For a global economy straining under the weight of trade tensions, geopolitical fragmentation and weak growth, China's dual pledges -- to sustain its own steady expansion and to open its vast market further to the world -- offer a rare note of predictability.
China on Thursday set an economic growth target of 4.5 to 5 percent for 2026, aiming for a good start to the new five-year plan that charts the course for high-quality development and offers much-needed certainty to a troubled world economy.
The GDP growth target is well aligned with China's long-range objectives through the year 2035 and broadly in line with the long-term growth potential of China's economy, said a government work report submitted to the country's top legislature for deliberation.
China's economic growth target for 2026 is proactive and pragmatic, reflecting a broad assessment of domestic conditions and shifts in the external environment, said Shen Danyang, head of the group responsible for drafting this year's government work report.
The projected pace would also be among the highest for major economies globally, Shen said.
"The signal this target sends to the international community is clear that China is no longer pursuing growth speed alone," said Zhang Ying, associate dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, in an interview with Xinhua. "This year's target reflects China's firm commitment to high-quality development."
The country has made it clear that it will strive for better in practice regarding this year's growth target, and favorable conditions for achieving this target are in place, according to the report.
The government work report outlined this year's major tasks, including building a robust domestic market, fostering new growth drivers at a faster pace, and moving faster to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology.
To achieve these goals, China will continue to implement a more proactive fiscal policy and apply an appropriately accommodative monetary policy. The orientations highlight policy continuity and offer further assurance to a global economy unnerved by trade and geopolitical tensions.
China's global economic heft means its policy moves are pivotal to the world economy. Over the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China saw its economy grow at an average annual pace of 5.4 percent, well above the global average, and contributed around 30 percent of global growth.
The country has remained the world's second-largest importer for 16 consecutive years, has cemented its position as the world's largest trader of goods, and has become a major trading partner of more than 160 countries and regions.
The weight of the role is only set to grow. According to a World Bank forecast, global growth is projected to ease to 2.6 percent in 2026. If the forecast holds, the 2020s are on track to be the weakest decade for global growth since the 1960s.
"What we achieved in 2025 was indeed hard won," according to the government work report. "Rarely in many years have we encountered such a grave and complex landscape, where external shocks and challenges were intertwined with domestic difficulties and tough policy choices."
In a sign of assurance to the troubled global economy in the longer term, China on Thursday unveiled a slew of development priorities for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).
The 15th Five-Year Plan sets a clear anchor: doubling China's 2020 per capita GDP by 2035 to reach the level of a moderately developed country. Getting there will require navigating a middle stretch that China has chosen not to over-prescribe, as annual growth targets will be set year by year, a flexibility that reflects both confidence in the trajectory and awareness of the uncertainties ahead.
The 15th Five-Year Plan marks a pivotal stretch in China's modernization drive, and its ambitions reach well beyond domestic growth metrics. By directing capital into frontier technologies, deepening trade and investment linkages, and advancing green development, the blueprint is poised to affect the global economy across multiple dimensions, from the tempo of the energy transition to the landscape of advanced manufacturing worldwide.
Simon Smith, director and general manager of Taikoo Engine Services (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., an engineering branch of the multinational company Swire Group, said long-term policy clarity changes the calculus for multinationals operating in China.
"The five-year plan transforms investment decisions from probabilistic bets to calculated strategic positioning," Smith told Xinhua in an interview. "Without the plan, the company may hesitate on a specific capability expansion or investment, uncertain whether regulatory support, skilled labor availability, or customer demand will materialize."
That strategic positioning comes with a concrete roadmap. According to China's technology agenda, the country will nurture emerging industries and industries of the future. During the 2026-2030 period, China will foster new drivers of economic growth such as quantum technology, biomanufacturing, hydrogen and nuclear fusion power, brain-computer interfaces, embodied artificial intelligence, and 6G mobile communications.
Hu Jinbo, a national political advisor and head of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, said the next five years represent a critical window for China's economic transition from high-speed growth to high-quality development, and sci-tech innovation will serve as the core engine of this transformation.
As China continues to achieve sci-tech innovation breakthroughs, developing countries can draw on China's experience to accelerate their own industrialization, while developed countries will also gain broader opportunities for collaboration in advanced manufacturing and frontier technologies, Hu said.
For the rest of the world, what may matter most in the longer run is not the pace of growth, but its composition. China has set an explicit goal of raising household consumption as a share of GDP over the next five years.
For a global economy straining under the weight of trade tensions, geopolitical fragmentation and weak growth, China's dual pledges -- to sustain its own steady expansion and to open its vast market further to the world -- offer a rare note of predictability.
A more balanced Chinese economy underpinned by stronger domestic demand would generate far-reaching spillover effects globally, according to a recent Bloomberg article citing Robin Xing, chief China economist at Morgan Stanley.
"Chinese and foreign companies alike would benefit from the depth and scale of the China market, which would help cushion today's geopolitical challenges," Xing was quoted as saying.
According to the government work report, China will deepen reform of the institutional framework for promoting foreign investment this year. It will open wider to the outside world, with efforts to expand market access and open up more areas, particularly in the service sector.
Zhang Ying highlighted three aspects of China's opportunities for global investors: a massive unified market with rising purchasing power of residents, highly efficient and cost-effective supply chains, and an increasingly open, pro-investment regulatory environment.
"Against a backdrop of global volatility and macroeconomic headwinds, these fundamentals offer significant appeal to international investors and corporations," Zhang said.
