Currently, during the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services held the 2021 China International Finance Annual Forum with the theme of “Green Beijing, Open Finance”. In the forum, there was a process for the key speech named “The Construction of a Global Financial Center: Financial Opening and Sustainable Development” in which envoys in China from various countries exchanged ideas on China’s financial opening.

    Thomas Stahli, deputy director and minister of Switzerland Embassy in China, said that in the high-level meeting and the annual financial dialogue between China and Switzerland, governments of both sides communicated about bilateral financial cooperation. In the March of this year, heads of both countries agreed on a working plan to enhance the cooperation of bilateral financial market. The priority of the plan was to start cooperation between the stock markets in Zurich, Shanghai and Shenzhen and collaboration in terms of banks and financial management as well as insurance and reinsurance. In a wider scope, Switzerland payed close attention to China’s open measures and appreciated China for it’s open measures in the last few years. It’s out of question that China could benefit from these effort which was conducive to develop China’s financial market, to increase market standards and to learn from international experience.

    Mr. Hubsch Marc Pierre, Luxembourg’s ambassador to China, pointed out that the most important thing was to enhance the economic connection between China and Luxembourg, especially in financial service industry, for example, enhancing the cooperation relating to economic infrastructure in exchange. Luxembourg should play a more decisive role in helping Chinese enterprises, state-owned enterprises and leading private enterprises to have a higher share of European market. The Luxembourg government could help Chinese companies to place their main business there and to make full use of Luxembourg’s capital resource, custom-made financial service and human resource. Luxembourg and it’s Chinese partners, supervising institutes, companies and academic circle should make more common effort in Fintech and TechFin fields.

    Rahul Ahluwalia, British minister counsellor and director of financial and professional service industry of the Ministry of Trade, said that it’s exciting to hear that president Xi Jinping would set up Beijing Stock Exchange. Supporting small and medium sized enterprises to attract equity and investment was a global challenge. SME was the pillar of economy, capable of offering employment and effective innovation-driven force. He hoped that Beijing Stock Exchange could provide new solutions and financing channels for SME. In terms of green finance, Chinese financial department had been spending effort to promote the transformation form a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon economy. In terms of opening-up, China would maintain a prudent attitude while expand the opening to the outside world. In the future, we would continue to make more effort to jointly cope with the global challenges of the pandemic and the transformation to a green economy.

    Fabrizio Costa, the economic and financial councilor of Italy Embassy in China, said that he looked forward to promote financial cooperation, including the expansion of market access. For example, Chinese government could consider allowing Italy financial institutes to have more access to China’s market, so as to improve the diversity of investment in China and to set up Chinese financial institutes in Italy which would in turn increase China’s investment opportunities in Italy. Another important goal was to establish deeper connection between the capital market in China and Italy to improve the efficiency of the two markets and establish more cooperation so as to support common finance to support infrastructure, including the construction in countries along the “Belt and Road” initiative.