China has made major progress in expanding import to promote consumption and cutting tariffs as part of the country's efforts to further open up its market, Chinese President Xi Jinping said at the opening ceremony of the second China International Import Expo (CIIE) on Tuesday.

All of the five measures as announced at the inaugural CIIE last November to expand opening-up have been generally implemented, Xi said.

And the Chinese president on Tuesday pledged that China will adopt the following five measures to promote higher-level opening up:

   -- Continue to expand market opening up;

   -- Continue to improve the framework of opening up;

   -- Continue to optimize business environment;

   -- Continue to deepen multilateral and bilateral cooperation;

   -- Continue to jointly build the Belt and Road.

These new measures were pronounced through Xi’s keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony held at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) which hosts the CIIE 2019 from Nov. 5 to 10.

Xi said he believes that China, bound to have even brighter economic development prospects, will provide other countries with more opportunities in terms of market, investment and growth, as the country will further ease market access for foreign investment and shorten the negative list.

China will continue to improve the business environment to make it more market-oriented, law-based and internationalized, he said.

The Chinese president made a call that countries should uphold the concept of putting humanity first and should not let their own interest override that of mankind and urged resolute opposition to protectionism and unilateralism in a bid to jointly build a world economy of openness and cooperation.

Xi proposed continuous reduction of trade barriers and further improvement of global value and supply chains to jointly nurture market demand.

Efforts were called for to uphold the core values and basic principles of the multilateral trading regime, and promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation.

The Chinese president on Tuesday put forward three proposals for economic globalization, namely, jointly building an open and cooperative world economy; jointly building an open and innovative world economy; and jointly building an open and sharing world economy.

And countries are also called upon to oppose knowledge blockade to avoid creating or even widening technological divide.

Xi urged jointly strengthening protection of intellectual property rights.