China's Xi promises more market opening at trade fair

President Xi Jinping pledged to open China’s service industries wider to foreign competitors as its first in-person trade fair since coronavirus outbreak opened under intensive anti-disease controls.

Xi gave details in his speech Friday night, but Chinese leaders are emphasizing development of tourism, retailing and or services. y are part of a campaign to nurture ecomic growth driven by consumer spending instead of exports and investment.

China will “relax market access for service industries” and “actively expand imports of high-quality services,” Xi said at China International Fair for Trade in Services.

Xi appeared on a video screen before Chinese businesspeople and a handful of foreign VIPs who wore masks and sat in widely d chairs at a convention center adjacent to site of 2008 Summer Olympics. Most exhibitors from abroad are participating via internet because Beijing has yet to relax curbs that bar most foreign visitors from country.

annual export-oriented Canton Trade Fair in sourn China, world's biggest sales event, was held online in June.

China’s manufacturers are flexible, efficient global competitors, but its fledgling tourism, finance, health care and or service industries lag ir Western counterparts. Regulatory barriers limit ability of foreign banks and or providers to compete in China two decades after Beijing joined free-trading World Trade Organization.

U.S. officials who are waging a tariff war with Beijing over its trade record point to services, in which United States runs a surplus with China, as a promising area.

Organizers say 18,000 companies and 100,000 people from 148 countries and regions signed up to take part in trade fair, which runs through Wednesday.

China, where pandemic began in December, was first ecomy to shut down and first to begin struggle to revive business after ruling party declared victory over disease in March. Factories, office towers and shopping malls have reopened but visitors to public buildings in Beijing still are checked for fever by masked guards.

China became first ecomy to return to growth with a 3.2% expansion over a year earlier in three months ending in June, rebounding from previous quarter’s 6.8% contraction.

trade fair has three-dimensional techlogy for foreign vendors to show goods and secure online communications to talk to customers, director of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, Yan Ligang, told reporters on Thursday.

Guests and staff must wear masks and will be checked throughout day for fever, according to Yan. He said organizers will “restrict flow” of people and building will be tested for virus and disinfected every day.

Some 200 medical, disease control and first aid staff will be on duty, Yan said.

Chinese companies plan to showcase possible coronavirus vaccines that are under development, according to Beijing Health Commission. It said some will display tools that can detect virus in 30 minutes.

Or planned exhibitions include cultural, financial and public health services, next-generation telecoms and service robots.

coronavirus “cant stop development of service trade, r can it stop our confidence and action to work toger,” Xi said.