China News Service, Shanghai, November 10 (Reporter Yin Qianyun) The 9th China International Import Expo closed in Shanghai on the 10th. In a few days, the 33rd Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Informal Leaders’ Meeting will be held in Shenzhen.
From Shanghai to Shenzhen, two international events were launched one after another. The world's eyes continue to turn to China, looking forward to more open cooperation opportunities.
As the world's first national-level exhibition with an import theme, the CIIE has been held for nine consecutive sessions. A total of 4,142 overseas companies participated in this CIIE, nearly 200 companies and institutions participated in the nine consecutive editions, and more than 2,000 companies participated for the first time. The intended transaction volume in one year reached 85.45 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 2.3% from the previous session, setting a record high.
"Old friends" continue to attend appointments and "new faces" continue to join, which not only reflects the high attention of international investors to the Chinese market, but also reflects the accelerating pace of China's opening up.
Reduce the negative list for foreign investment access, comprehensively cancel restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector, and promote the construction of comprehensive pilot demonstrations for expanding opening-up in the service industry... Over the past nine years, China has implemented the measures announced at the CIIE one by one, promoting high-level opening up to a deeper level and wider areas.
While China's openness has become increasingly clear, the world's open environment is facing new challenges. The "World Openness Report 2026" released during this CIIE shows that the world openness index will drop by 1% year-on-year in 2025, the largest decline since 2016.
However, the practical need for win-win cooperation has not weakened. All parties are still looking for markets, expanding trade, and exploring more cooperation opportunities in the industrial chain and supply chain.
At this CIIE, the enthusiasm of APEC economies to participate in the exhibition is a microcosm: the exhibition area of American companies has maintained the first place for 8 consecutive years; the exhibition area of Canadian and New Zealand companies is the largest ever; the exhibition area of Australian companies has expanded by 25% compared with last year...
Zhang Yuyan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the process of opening up may have twists and turns, but the needs of countries to improve labor productivity and improve people's lives have not changed, and practical requirements such as mutual learning in scientific and technological progress and joint responses to climate change will not disappear.
This demand is particularly evident in the Asia-Pacific region, which has close economic ties. Currently, there are close trade and investment exchanges among economies in the region, and industrial and supply chains are intertwined. With the development of digital economy, green transformation and technological innovation, all parties are facing more common issues in areas such as trade and investment facilitation, technological exchanges and industrial collaboration.
The CIIE allows the world to share the Chinese market and provides a platform for companies from various countries to deepen economic and trade exchanges. Moving from market opening to regional collaboration is an important direction in promoting the sustainable development of the Asia-Pacific economy.
Observations believe that the CIIE is consistent with the concept of openness advocated by APEC. Facing the rise of global protectionism, Asia-Pacific economies need to strengthen dialogue, enhance mutual trust, and build more consensus on maintaining free trade and deepening regional cooperation.
"One focuses on actual economic and trade activities, and the other focuses on discussions of economic and trade rules and mechanisms, but the opening logic behind the two is consistent." Zhou Mi, a researcher at the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce of China, said that the CIIE allows the world to see China's actual actions to proactively expand opening up, while APEC allows the world to see China's positive willingness to promote regional cooperation.
Xu Xinxiong, CEO of Thailand's Tencel Group, said that the institutional dividends of the CIIE's open platform, the APEC cooperation framework and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are superimposed on each other, providing multinational companies with broader development space and more stable institutional guarantees.
By embracing the world with a more open market and building consensus with closer cooperation, from Shanghai to Shenzhen, China is injecting more certainty into the economic development of the Asia-Pacific and even the world.
