Further reform, opening-up to better serve global growth

Support from data

China reported year-on-year GDP growth of 6.8 percent in the first quarter, the 11th quarter in a row with a growth rate between 6.7 percent and 6.9 percent.

Consumption contributed 77.8 percent, more than last year's average of 58.8 percent, continuing an uptrend that began five years ago.

In 2018, China's total retail sales of consumer goods are estimated to reach 40.5 trillion yuan ($6.4 trillion), replacing the United States as the world's largest retail market, said Wang Changlin, an economic expert with the State Development and Reform Commission.

Services accounted for 61.6 percent of the first-quarter growth, consolidating a leading role that marks an economic structural transformation, the National Bureau of Statistics said, attributing this partly to changes in China's consumption structure.

"Rapidly growing per capita disposable income and a high employment rate will sustain robust consumption," J.P. Morgan Chase's Ulrich said.

Today, China is the major trading partner of over 120 countries and regions. In the first quarter, customs data recorded a 21.8 percent drop in China's trade surplus, with imports rising 11.7 percent and exports 7.4 percent.

A country of net capital outflows since 2015, China in the first quarter has maintained for five months an increase in its outward foreign direct investment, reaching a total volume of $25.5 billion in 140 countries and regions.

Engine for global growth

According to the World Bank, China has maintained an annual growth rate of 7.1 percent during the past five years, contributing over 30 percent of global economic growth, more than the contribution made by the US, the Eurozone countries and Japan combined.

Xi voiced China's staunch support for free and inclusive trade at the Boao conference, saying globalization is in line with the common interests of all countries.

"We will continue to safeguard international order and rules and support free trade and the liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment," Xi said at the four-day meeting.

"The international community should abandon the Cold War mentality and advocate working together to build a community with a shared future for mankind," he said.

To make globalization more inclusive so that its benefits can be shared more extensively, Beijing has launched the Belt and Road Initiative and is asking others to join it.

Proposed by Xi in 2013, the initiative aims to achieve policy, infrastructure, trade, financial and people-to-people connectivity along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes, building a platform for international cooperation to create new growth drivers.

"China's pledge to continue to deepen reform and opening-up by liberalizing market access and reducing trade barriers sends a clear signal that it wishes to not only improve itself, but to inclusively share the benefits derived from China's development model," Jon R. Taylor, a US political science professor at University of St. Thomas in Houston, told Xinhua in April.