Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming attended China Development Forum 2011 and delivered a speech in Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on March 20. Full text of his speech is as follows:Honorable President Wang Mengkui,Ladies and Gentlemen,The year 2011 is the first year of China’s 12th Five-Year-Plan and the 10th anniversary of China’s accession into the WTO. Here, I would avail myself of this opportunity to deliberate with you on China’s opening-up strategy in the new period.Ten years ago, China made vast and in-depth commitments in industry, agriculture, services and intellectual property rights when confronting difficulties and challenges as to enter into the WTO. It is very difficult for China to make such commitments.In past decade, China, through studying and obeying the WTO rules, successfully turned from a fresh WTO member to a participant and impellor in formulating the rules. In the period, the Chinese government made great efforts. China has opened more than 100 sectors in service trade and widely sorted out laws and regulations involving over 3000 laws and regulations. Besides, China's customs duty rate dropped from 15.3 present to 9.8 percent in average. When facing with the increasingly open market and pressure of sharp reduction of customs duty rates, Chinese enterprises grew up through formidable and even torturous adjustment in the drastic international competition. Although some WTO members doubted whether China could abide by the rules and fulfill its commitments, China has proved through deeds that it could. The WTO Director-General Lamy assessed China’s fulfillment of its commitments as “A+”, which is the confirmation and encourage for China’s efforts. Practices in the past decade have proved that China’s accession into the WTO has not only improved its economic development but also made China’s ties with other countries ever closer and realized win-win. People present here today are all witnesses of the process. Both in 2009 and 2010, China’s contribution to the global economic growth only took up over a half instead of 3 percent 30 years ago. The WTO pointed out in the 3rd review on China’s trade policies that China played “a constructive role” in stimulating the global demand and made “important contributions” to stabilizing the world economy.Ladies and Gentlemen,In modern times, China shut its door to rest of the world for a long time when the Chinese people suffered a lot from the backward country caused by the reclusive policy. Now, we clearly felt the benefits brought by the opening-up policy and the strong aspirations to realize modernization by opening-up. We are deeply aware that opening-up is beneficial to making use of global factors to explore development opportunities, participating into international competition and cooperation, accelerating the advance of technologies and innovation of systems, and drawing on different civilization fruits in the world as to strengthen the vitality and creativity of our nation.Through the baptism of opening-up in past over 30 years, the Chinese people’s awareness of opening-up is more intense, their foundation of industrial development is more solid and their social conditions of expanding opening-up are more mature. We are full of confidence in opening wider to the rest of the world under the new situation. In the CPPCC & NPC sessions 2011, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said China cannot develop itself in isolation of the world. It is clearly pointed out to “implement mutually-beneficial and win-win opening up strategy” in China’s 12th Five-Year-Plan. To further improve the opening-up has achieved high-intensive consensus in China. We will continue our courage and determination as it in the past decade to implement a more active strategy of promoting the development, reforms and innovation by opening-up. Ladies and Gentlemen,At present, profound impacts by the international financial crisis remain. The uncertainties of the world economy are building up owing to European debt crisis, volatile situation in the Middle East, high-intensity earthquake in Japan. There exist excess liquidity in the globe, price-hike of major commodities, and great expectations on inflation. China faces domestic issues of environment resource restraint, price hike of raw materials, increasing labor cost, weakening traditional comparative advantages and steady implementation of macro-control policies. In the new international and domestic circumstances, China will attach equal importance to import and export, to foreign investment and domestic investment, and take improving its opening-up as the new driving force in transformation of the economic development pattern.In the past three decades, China’s exports contribute to economic growth at an annual rate of 20% in average. Currently, foreign trade directly drove up the total employment of more than 80 million, 60% of which came from rural areas. Steady export matters not only for China’s economic growth and employment but also for the coordinated development of urban and rural areas and sustainable growth of domestic consumption. China will accelerate the economic restructuring, make efforts in fostering new competitive advantages in international competition and cooperation, and strive to keep the steady growth of export.In recent years, China pays increasing attention to the role of imports in promoting the balance of macro-economy and structural adjustment. We vigorously improved the productivity and management by bringing in advanced equipments, technologies and management experiences. China's imports are a significant driving force for global economic growth and contribute substantially to scale down the imbalances of global trade. In 2010, the U.S. export to China increased by 32.2%, EU export to China by 30.2% and Japan export to by 36.6%, all far higher than the growth rate of their respective import from China. China now is the first largest export market for Japan, ROK, ASEAN, Australia, Brazil and South Africa, the second largest export market for EU, and the third largest export market for the United States. China will continue increasing its import from least developed countries and the countries and regions where their trade with China is in surplus. China hopes that countries that their trade with China is in deficit could relax its export control so as to create great policy environment for the balanced development of bilateral trade.In fact, China’s foreign trade is developing more balanced by our efforts. According to the statistics of Chinese Customs, China’s trade surplus in 2009 is US$100 billion less compare with the previous year, and in 2010 it further down by US$12.6 billion. In particular, there was a trade deficit in the first two years of 2011. The trade is in deficit in February of 2011, amounting to US$7.31 billion. It is anticipated that the ratio of China’s trade surplus to its GDP this year will drop further from 3.1% last year.We have noted that, some people have doubts on China’s investment environment; some even, asked whether China would welcome foreign investment any longer. And my answer is that China’s efforts to transform its economic development pattern and expand domestic demand don’t mean it will shut out foreign investment, rather, it will let it play a more active role. China and global capital will grow together and share flourish.It is necessary for fair market competition that China has rescinded some preferential policies for foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and set a uniform taxation rate for domestic firms and FIEs. Recently, China's publication of the rules governing foreign takeover of Chinese companies is in line with international best practices with the purpose of making our policies more transparent and fair, and would result in no additional administrative procedures. The policies designed to encourage innovation in China are applicable to all enterprises running business in China, including the FIEs. In government procurement, the Chinese government would follow an open and transparent policy to grant completely equal treatment to Chinese and foreign firms as well as their products. We will continue welcoming FIEs to participate into China’s reforms and opening-up. All domestic firms and FIEs will be treated equally.We will attach more importance to “going global” and promote the balanced development of “bringing in” and “going global”. In 2003, China’s outward direct investment was US$2.8 billion and in 2010, it hit US$59 billion, which equals to 60 percent of the foreign direct investment in China. In the next five to 10 years, China will gradually strike a balance on the capital flow. We also hope that some countries could improve their investment environment, treat Chinese enterprises as equals in market access, and safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, institutions and personnel.Ladies and Gentlemen,The WTO Doha Round Negotiation launched 10 years ago. The success of the Negotiation is significant for consolidating multilateral trading system and global economic recovery. If all parties could push forward the Negotiation based on the achieved fruits, we will provide a practical safeguard system for the strong, balanced and sustainable growth of the world economy. China will join WTO members in Doha Round Negotiations and make efforts to reach lofty goals. Thank you!