China's pursuit of high-quality development continuously creates opportunities for world: China Daily editorial

The 140th China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, opening in Guangzhou this week, is an illustration of how China's pursuit of innovation-driven growth and high-quality development continues to create opportunities for the world.

For seven decades, the Canton Fair has served as an iconic window through which the world has come to know China and China has reached out to the world. Nowadays, it vividly demonstrates the world's second-largest economy — with its size, openness, vitality and resilience — is providing certainty and stability to a turbulent world.

As President Xi Jinping pointed out in a congratulatory letter to the fair on Wednesday, under the new circumstances, China is willing to join hands with countries around the world to safeguard the multilateral trading system, ensure the stability and smooth operation of global industry and supply chains, expand the space for mutually beneficial international economic and trade cooperation, and promote a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, to inject new momentum into global development and prosperity.

More than 32,000 companies — including over 11,000 high-tech or specialized manufacturers — are participating in this year's fair. Nearly 64 percent of the exhibitors use technologies such as artificial intelligence and the industrial internet.

The fair's changing composition of exhibits also tells the economic story. Once dominated by textiles, handicrafts and inexpensive consumer goods, it now showcases energy-storage systems, intelligent medical equipment and embodied AI. Chinese manufacturers are moving beyond competing principally on labor costs toward competing through the application of technology, product sophistication and industrial efficiency.

The economic figures suggest that this transformation is gaining traction. China's foreign trade grew by 18.8 percent year-on-year in yuan terms during the first three quarters. September's producer price index rose by 5 percent year-on-year, while consumer prices increased by 0.9 percent year-on-year. More revealing is the combination of expanding trade, technological investment and changing industrial capabilities.

The supply-side transformation is particularly remarkable. The 26th China International Industry Fair, which opened in Shanghai on Monday, has attracted more than 3,200 companies from 24 countries and regions. Nearly 300 advanced technologies and products are making their debuts. Shanghai aims to develop 500 advanced smart factories and deploy 8,000 humanoid robots in manufacturing by 2028.

These goals illustrate an important economic mechanism. China's extensive industry and supply chains allow innovations to move quickly from laboratories to commercial production. Dense networks of suppliers, engineers, manufacturers and logistics providers reduce the costs of experimentation and scaling up. Large-scale production, in turn, generates experience, lowers costs and finances further innovation.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle. Technological advances improve manufacturing productivity; greater industrial efficiency makes new products more affordable; and a vast domestic market provides the demand and feedback needed to refine them. The result is an increasingly sophisticated industrial ecosystem.

The dynamism is also visible in the growing popularity of "China Haul", as foreign tourists fill their suitcases with Chinese electronics, smart devices and fashionable consumer goods. Products developed for an intensely competitive domestic market are finding admirers abroad. China's consumers are helping shape products that can succeed internationally.

This interaction between supply and demand is what makes China's market distinctive. Its industrial system offers foreign businesses opportunities to source components, develop technologies and manufacture efficiently. Its consumers offer opportunities to sell products and services. Its innovation ecosystem offers opportunities for partnerships and investment.

The Canton Fair's evolution indicates that China is offering the world broad access to its efficient economic system, in which innovation, production and consumption increasingly feed one another. As Premier Li Qiang said in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Canton Fair on Wednesday, an increasingly open, innovative and reliable China will bring new opportunities, fresh growth drivers and greater certainty to the world.