Foreign firms should give credit to China's increased openness: Finnish scholar

HELSINKI - Foreign firms that criticize China should take into account its increased openness in recent years, a Finnish scholar has said.

Carl Fey, a professor of international business at Aalto University in Helsinki, told Xinhua on Thursday that the ongoing fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) represents an important action taken by China in the spirit of opening up.

"The CIIE is a large, impressive initiative for China to try to help foreign firms to be able to import products and services to China," Fey said. "It is rare to find a country putting such effort into helping foreign firms to import into their country."

"The CIIE is partially a response to the international critique that China has been too closed to foreign firms," he added.

China has accomplished a great deal, and is surely moving towards an approach that will be favored by major global economies, Fey said. At the opening ceremony of CIIE on Thursday, China warned against protectionism, saying it would uphold true multilateralism.

"Indeed, it is exciting to have China as one of the loudest voices against protectionism," Fey told Xinhua.

"Hopefully, other traditional opponents of protectionism will follow China's example and also speak and act equally strongly against protectionism."

Another sign that China is becoming increasingly open is that China's overall tariff level has decreased from 15.3 percent to 7.4 percent since it entered the World Trade Organization in 2001.

This figure is lower than the 9.8 percent accession commitment of China, Fey said. He added that China's continued experimentation with free economic zones is exciting to watch, and something other countries can also learn from.