Seeking Mutual Benefit and Common Development with Other Countries

China cannot develop independently without the rest of the world. Likewise, the world needs China if it is to attain prosperity. Following the trend of economic globalization, China is participating in international economic and technological cooperation on an ever larger scale, in wider areas and at higher levels in an effort to push economic globalization towards the direction of common prosperity for all countries. Today, the mainstream of international trade is to share successes, with all as winners. China adheres to its opening-up strategy for mutual benefit. For this, it has made conforming to China's own interests while promoting common development a basic principle guiding its foreign economic and trade work, develops its economic and trade relations with other countries on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and reciprocity, and makes constant contributions to the sustained growth of global trade.

China has been an active supporter of and participant in multilateral trade system. Since its accession to the WTO in December 2001, China has strictly kept its commitments to create more favorable conditions for international economic and technological cooperation. China has sorted out and revised some 3,000 laws, regulations and department rules, continually improved its foreign-related economic legal system, and enhanced the transparency of its trade policies. China has cut its customs tariffs step by step, as promised, and by 2005 its average tariffs had been reduced to 9.9 percent, and most non-tariff measures had been cancelled. Banking, insurance, securities, distribution and other service trade sectors have opened wider to the outside world. Of the 160-odd service trade sectors listed by the WTO, China has opened more than 100, or 62.5 percent, a level close to that of the developed countries. China has actively pushed ahead with a new round of multilateral trade negotiations, participated in talks on various topics, especially on agriculture, market access of non-farm products and the service trades, and played a constructive role in helping developing and developed members reduce disputes through talks. China, together with other WTO members, has done a lot of work to spur substantial progress to reach early agreement among the negotiators.

Record-Breaking Activity

The New York Stock Exchange measures market activity by the number of investor messages it processes in any given day, as opposed to the number of shares traded. On July 26, the NYSE processed 695 million messages, a 27% jump from its previous record of 548 million messages processed a day earlier. The NYSE Group, which includes the Archipelago Exchange it acquired last year, traded 5.1 billion shares on July 26, its second-most-active day after setting an all-time record of 5.19 billion shares on June 22.

The NASDAQ Stock Market reported 1.7 billion messages processed on July 26, up 42% from the prior record on Feb. 27, and it entered a record 326 million orders, a 59% jump from the previous high in February.

Cleveland Rueckert, a research analyst at Birinyi Associates in New York, believes volatility was the key contributor to the record trading volumes on July 26. "With the whole subprime thing, and the financial sector sort of falling apart, you have people who are getting nervous," he says.

Corporate earnings are affecting trading decisions, as is the approach of the end of the month, when mutual funds disclose performance information to investors. That's likely spurring portfolio managers to lock in profits by selling stocks they think have topped out, Rueckert says.