President Xi Jinping has reportedly introduced China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) several times to foreign leaders since March, and a new open economic system is one of the plan's key phrases.

At the China-US Governors Forum this September, the president said that China will make efforts to facilitate a new round of high-level opening-up to the outside world, and accelerate the process of establishing a new open economic system.

In this respect, China is encouraging some regions with good conditions to launch pilot programs first. For instance, China has already established pilot free trade zones in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangdong and Fujian provinces, which have adopted the pre-establishment national treatment and negative-list management. And Beijing is piloting programs in the fields of finance, tourism and healthcare, among others.

The government will take effective measures to propel coordinated development among different regions as well as between urban and rural areas. It will accelerate the realization of the Belt and Road Initiative to build a platform for domestic regions to expand foreign cooperation. For example, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region will be a core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt, and Yunnan province will be the bridge tower of the Belt and Road Initiative in Southwest China.