Chinese President Xi Jinping's New Year speech has delivered a clear message that China will be firmly committed to carrying forward reform and opening up, and promoting sustainable and common development for a more prosperous world, said international experts and analysts.
Determination for opening up
In 2018, the year that marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, more than 100 major reform measures were rolled out. The world has seen China's accelerating reform and opening up, and its determination to carry it forward, Xi said.
China's reforms will never stop, and its doors will only open ever wider, he said.
Han Woo Duck, director of the Republic of Korea's JoongAng Ilbo China Institute, was very impressed by the keyword "opening up" that Xi mentioned in the speech. China has launched a lot of measures to boost domestic demand and tried to open its market wider, providing more chances and broader prospects of cooperation for foreign businesses, he said.
Lucio Blanco Pitlo, a lecturer from the Chinese Studies Program at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, spoke highly of China's greater role in an increasingly broad range of fields from climate change to global trade and investment. He said the world welcomes China's continuing reform and opening up as it offers opportunities for global growth.
Xi's New Year remarks are inspiring and encouraging, said Zhao Xinwei, professor at Japan's Tokyo University of Science. He believes that China will make greater progress in national development and gain more respect from the world.
People's well-being takes central place
Just like in Xi's New Year address at the end of 2017, the well-being and happiness of the Chinese people once again took the central place in his Monday speech. Xi's warm words gained praises from overseas experts.
"What struck me most was the great importance attached to people -- their needs and aspiration, and the centrality that the Chinese leader wants to give to them," said Francesco Maringio, an Italian China expert based in Bologna.
Xi pays attention to the Chinese people, including villagers, veterans, workers and scientists, Maringio said. "The message is very clear: no one will be left behind," he said.
"Xi singled out people living in hardship, with whom he had visited, and he reinforced the importance of poverty alleviation again," said Robert Kuhn, a renowned U.S. expert on China and recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal.
According to current UN standards, China has lifted more than 700 million people out of poverty and contributed more than 70 percent to global poverty reduction since the onset of reform and opening up in 1978.
Commitment to development
China's sincerity and goodwill to safeguard world peace and promote common development will remain unchanged, Xi said in the speech.
Stephen Perry, chairman of Britain's 48 Group Club as well as recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal, said "a new China has emerged which astounds the world with its level of achievement."
"As we look ahead, domestically the agenda is to raise the quality and standard of life of the people of China; externally, it is to help create a community of sharing so that all the world can enjoy sustainable development and cooperate," he said.
In the opinion of Ismael Buchanan, dean of the School of Economics and Governance at the University of Rwanda, China has become a more market-based economy and opened doors to the world economy through various initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the China International Import Expo and a pilot free trade zone in China's Hainan province.
All these initiatives point out a clear direction for China's long-term development, which would contribute to the world economy and regional connectivity through trade and investment, he said.
