Recently, the Ministry of Commerce has released the Outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan for Commercial Development (Shang Zong Fa [2016] No. 224, hereinafter referred to as the "Plan").The principal of the Comprehensive Department of the Ministry of Commerce interpreted key issues concerning the Plan.

I. Preparation and Main Characteristics of the Plan

According to the unified deployment of the State Council, the preparation of the Plan was launched in the second half of 2014, and completed within two years. For the 13 major issues concerning the overall commercial development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the Ministry of Commerce carries out a preliminary study resulting in the formation of a series of research results; the experts' meeting and discussion meeting of the Plan are successively convened with soliciting opinions from experts; in the national business work conference in 2015, the delegates discussed the first draft of the Plan; the Ministry of Commerce organized three symposiums participated by local departments of commerce to listen widely to the opinions from all provincial departments of commerce, and finally released the Plan for implementation after examined and adopted by the party group meeting of the Ministry of Commerce.

The Plan is a five-year plan when the first centenary goal is about to be achieved since China enters into the decisive stage in finishing building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, which has an important significance on the development of commercial business and even the economic and social development. The Plan takes five development ideas as a guide, regards the improvement of developing the quality and benefit as the center, pays more attention to the system and mechanism reform, attaches more importance to structural adjustment and the transformation and upgrading, lays more emphasis on the connection and linkage among the trade and industry, domestic trade and foreign trade, and investment and trade, pays more attention to the opening of regional coordination and coordinated development, attaches more importance to improving China's institutional discourse power in the global economic governance, and explicitly proposes to gradually form the new pattern of commercial development with innovation-driven guiding, unified regulations of market and higher level of openness, in order to make new contributions for the achievement of Two Centenary Goals and the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

II. New Changes and Features of Domestic and Overseas Environment for Commercial Development during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period

The Plan proposes that, during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, profound changes are taking place in the domestic and overseas environment with the foundation and conditions of commercial development solider; meanwhile, there exists fierce competition and severe challenges. Only by adhering to the Theory of Two Points can China accurately grasp the new changes and new characteristics of the domestic and international trend, enhance the awareness of opportunities, unexpected development and responsibility, and constantly develop new prospect for commercial development.

From an international perspective, peaceful development is still the theme of the times, and win-win cooperation is an irresistible trend. World multi-polarization, economic globalization, cultural diversity and society informatization develops in depth, and a new round of science and technology revolution and industrial revolution is coming into play, and there are profound changes in pattern of international industrial division, and cross-border industrial chain, value chain and supply chain accelerate the integration, which results the relationship of converged interests with opportunity sharing, risk sharing and common fate sharing among countries in the world more close. At the same time, the international financial crisis has a far-reaching influence, and the world economy makes further adjustment with tortuous recovery; it is difficult to change the weak international market demand in the short term, and the global trade growth is sluggish, which lead to the cross-border investment with great fluctuation and continuous turmoil in international financial markets; the profound adjustment to the international economic and trade rules and systems are made, and the competition for the market, talents and resources become more fierce with the protectionism of trade and investment intensifying; geopolitical relations are complex, and traditional and non-traditional security threats are intertwined with increasing destabilizing and uncertainties factors.

Domestically, the long-term positive fundamentals of China's economic development remain unchanged, and still have broad prospects for development; economic development has entered into a new normal, and obviously has the trend of developing into the stage with higher morphology, complex division and reasonable structure; supply-side structural reform is deeply promoted, which is adding new dynamics to the economic development and structural adjustment; the construction of One Belt and Road is further advanced, which is creating new space for the economic development. Meanwhile, the relation of supply and demand for factors tightens; the cost continues to rise, while the fundamental turnaround for the trend of worsening ecological environment has not yet been achieved, and the traditional comparative advantages significantly weaken, and the unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable development remains the serious problem.

From the commercial development itself, the significant achievement of commercial development gained during the 12th Five-Year Plan period lays a solid foundation for the development of the 13th Five-Year Plan; the expansion of middle-income groups provides more vast space for the expansion of consumption scale and structural upgrading; innovation and application of information technology provides new impetus for the upgrading of the circulation; rich human resources, complete industrial system and the cumulative effects of innovation will further reinforce the foundation of cultivating international cooperation and new competitive advantages; as China's comprehensive strength and international status rise, China's ability to participate in international affairs is significantly enhanced resulting in China with better conditions than ever to proactively plan the new open strategic layout and to create favorable external environment for domestic development. While low efficiency of the circulation and high cost remain serious problems, and the consumption environment is urgent to be improved; transformation and upgrading of foreign trade become more difficult, and the utilization of foreign investment faces intensified competition, and the industrial structure and market layout of foreign investment and cooperation are unreasonable with the weak interactivity between trade and investment and low open cooperativity in the east, middle and west regions, thus there are still many institutional mechanisms obstacles for the commercial development.

III. How Does the Business Field Practice the Five Development Ideas

According to the guiding ideology and overall requirements identified by the Suggestion of the 13th Five-Year Plan made by the Central Government, it is one of the highlights of the Plan to penetrate the five development ideas of innovation, coordination, green, open and sharing. The Plan makes a comprehensive explanation by making systemic interpretation of the focus of attention and the effort point of five development ideas practiced in the commerce field.

With respect to the persistence of innovative development, the focus of attention is to enhance the new dynamics of commercial development, and the effort point includes accelerating the transformation and upgrading of traditional business, guiding the innovation of circulation reform based on the e-commerce, taking the path of innovation-driven development of foreign trade, making the best of global innovation resources through bringing in and going out, and promoting open innovation and so forth.

In connection with the persistence of coordinated development, the focus of attention is to optimize the pattern of commercial development, and the effort point is to properly handle major relations among the business development, which includes adhering to internal and external coordination, accelerating the construction of the big market featured with the internal and external integration, urban and rural overall development, and orderly competition, perfecting the opening strategic layout, promoting the interactive open among the east, middle and west regions, boosting the coordinated development of urban and rural regions, optimizing the international market and industrial layout of foreign investment, and enhancing the ability to allocate element resource in the globe.

For the persistence of green development, the focus of attention is to improve the ability of sustainable development of the business, and the effort point is to create green business, including advocating green consumption, developing green circulation, guiding the supply of green products and services, strengthening the international cooperation in energy saving and environmental protection, actively participating in the preparation of international rule on green development.
With respect to the persistence of open development, the focus of attention is to achieve win-win cooperation, and the effort point is to pursue the mutually beneficial opening up strategy to develop higher open economy including comprehensively promoting two-way opening up, promoting the orderly flow of domestic and international elements with efficient allocation of resources and deep integration of market, improving the lawful, international and facilitated business climate, actively participating in the global economic governance and supply of public goods, as well as building wide interests communities.

Regarding the persistence of shared development, the focus of attention is that the masses may share the achievement of commercial development, and the effort point is to strengthen the function of business serving people's livelihood to make people gain more sense of acquisition, which includes giving full play to the function of employment expansion by business, guaranteeing the safe and stable supply of daily necessities, making efforts to create favorable consumption environment for the masses, and promoting commercial poverty alleviation.

IV. Major Targets of Commercial Development Set by the Plan during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period
 
The Plan tightly focuses on the ambitious goal of building moderately prosperous society which combines with the outline object of the 13th Five-Year Plan for national economy and social development, and puts forward the major target of commercial development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. The major target is to strive for the significant improvement of the level of modernization of domestic trade circulation in next five years, to basically form the open economy system with high level, to obviously enhance new advantages of international economic competition and cooperation, as well as to comprehensively expand the international economic and commercial relations. Meanwhile, the Plan puts forward 14 specific indicators, and brief description on several important indicators is hereby made.

It focuses on the indicator of total social retail sales. With resident income constantly rising, the middle-income groups continuously expand, and the process of upgrading of the consumption structure of China's residents speeds up resulting in commodity consumption of urban and rural residents paid more attention to the quality, security and personalization. Due to the rapid development of service consumption demand, the foundation for consumption maintaining rapid development remains relatively solid. At the same time, the economic downward pressure increases leading to the decline in corporate profit, which affects the resident income and restrains consumer confidence and consumption capacity. Moreover, mid- and high-end commodity and services are lack of effective supply, and convenient and safe consumption environment is urgent to be improved, and it is difficult to give full play to the consumption potential. The Plan proposes that by 2020, the total social retail sales will nearly achieve RMB 48 trillion with average annual increase of about 10% slightly lower than that of 13.9% during the 12th Five-Year period.

It focuses on the indicator of commodity trade. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, due to the arduous and tortuous world economic recovery, weak recovery of the developed economic entities, obvious increase in the risks and difficulties of emerging economies, continuous weak international market demand, intensified trade protectionism, high cost of domestic elements, weak traditional advantages and difficulties in adjusting structure, the development of China's foreign trade faces more uncertain factors. Thus, there is no quantitative index set for the commodity trade, and the qualitative objective of making attempts to achieve the export growth of commodity trade higher than that of world trade with the expansion of export scale is only put forward.

It focuses on the indicator of service trade. China's service industry with great development potential has an on-going increasing contribution in the national economy, which lays a solid foundation for the development of service trade. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the scale of traditional trade including tourism and transport will continue to expand, and modern service trade including finance and insurance, information and computer, research and development and design, management consulting will rapidly develop, thus service trade is expected to keep rapid growth. Therefore, the Plan comes up with the service trade exceeding RMB 1 trillion with an average annual growth of about 10% and obvious increase in the proportion of foreign trade.

It focuses on the indicator of absorbing foreign capital. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, because of factors including weak recovery of the world economy and profound adjustment for the path of economic globalization, it is difficult for the global foreign direct investment to take on a look of prosperity again. Developed and developing countries attach importance to the attraction of foreign capital to promote the economic development, which leads to China's utilization of foreign capital facing intensified international competition. The comprehensive advantages of the utilization of foreign investment in China is still outstanding, and the opening field of services continuously expands, and the foreign capital utilized by service industry keeps stable growth, but the foreign capital utilized by manufacturing faces great pressure, which is affected by the rising cost of domestic elements and other factors. Overall, there is difficulty in maintaining the stable scale of utilizing foreign capital. The "Plan" raises that the scale of utilizing foreign capital may not be lower than that during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, and that we should pay more emphasis on the quality and efficiency of the utilization of foreign capital.

It focuses on the indicator of foreign investment. As China's enterprise comprehensive strength is continuously improved, the enterprise's ability and will to go out enhance. Since foreign investment rapidly develops, it is expected to continuously keep vigorous growth for some period in future. Meanwhile, the global trade and investment protectionism rises, and geopolitical relations are complex, and traditional and non-traditional security threats are intertwined, which bring about more destabilizing and uncertainties factors and higher risks and greater challenges. The Plan puts forward that the foreign investment for five years totals about USD 720 billion, increasing by USD 200 billion than that in the 12th Five-Year Plan period, and highlights the optimization of the industrial structure of foreign investment and structural layout of the market.

V. Main Considerations for the Implementation of the Three New Strategies, Namely, Upgrading of the Circulation, Quality Imports and Quality Exports, and Integration of Domestic and Overseas Market, Which Are Put Forward by the Plan
The Plan is aimed at the promotion of supply - side structural reform in commerce field, and proposes the implementation of the three new strategies, namely, upgrading of the circulation, quality imports and quality exports, and integration of domestic and overseas market, and relevant tasks and measures.

Firstly, carry out the strategy of the upgrading of the circulation. Two sides of the circulation separately linking up with the production and consumption are the lifeblood and the nerves of the national economy, and are key factors affecting the overall operating efficiency and benefits of the economy. Since the reform and opening up, the modern development of China's circulation industry has made great progress, but the low level of informatization, standardization, and intensification of the circulation remains a serious problem. Currently, with the innovation and wide application of modern information technologies including Internet and Internet of Things, the e-commerce develops rapidly with revolutionary impacts on the way of circulation, which include the squeezed space of traditional operational type of circulation industry, flourishing new industry pattern, accelerated integration of online and offline, reintegration of logistics system, and circulation pattern to be deeply adjusted. We must conform to the new trend of the reform of circulation industry, and vigorously promote the informationalized, standardized and intensive development of circulation, innovate the way of circulation, improve circulation efficiency, reduce circulation costs, and create a stronger modern circulation industry to better play a role in guiding the production of modern circulation, promoting consumption, and improving people's livelihood, and to make the modern circulation better play a role of fundamental supporting and guiding of the national economy.

Secondly, to implement the strategy of quality imports and quality exports. China has become a big trading nation worthy of the name; however, since the trade structure is unreasonable, and big but not strong, and China’s trade is not high in terms of technical contents and added value of exported products and we have less products with proprietary intellectual property rights and self-owned brands, China faces the double pressure from the developed countries and developing countries. At present, downward pressure from China's foreign trade continues to increase, which is not only closely related to weak external demand, but also a result of some profound contradictions left from history after adjusting the foreign trade structure, so it is urgent to convert the growth momentum and competitive advantage, to promote foreign trade from quantity expansion to quality improvement, from large inflows and outflows to quality imports and quality exports, to improve the competitiveness of the traditional advantageous products, to enhance the new export-oriented industries including manufacturing equipment industry, as well as to promote the export of products from mainly focusing on consumer goods to laying equal stress on consumer goods and capital goods; we should actively expand imports and improve the import benefit; meanwhile, we should expand the scale of service trade, improve the strategic position of trade in services, promote integrated development of commodity trade and service trade, cultivate the new competitive advantage of foreign trade with technology, brand, quality and service as the core, consolidate trading power status, and promote trade power's process.

Thirdly, to implement the strategy of integration of domestic and overseas market. Since the reform and opening up, the degree and level of China's marketization are improved, but due to reasons such as regional blockades, industrial monopolies and other reasons, the construction of integrated national market system lags behind, which has an influence on the improvement of China's market's vitality and overall economic strength. The promotion of the integration of domestic and foreign markets and the establishment of a unified, opening, competitive and orderly market system are the foundation for the market to play a decisive role in allocating resources, is an important direction to further release and develop productive forces, as well as an urgent major task for China’s system and mechanism reform. It is necessary for us to combine the construction of domestic market system with the expansion of international markets, to promote the integration of markets in all regions of China and the integration of domestic and international markets, to foster a number of commodity transaction markets featured with the combination of domestic and foreign trade and the business pattern in line with the internationality, to construct a batch of integrated services platforms of cross-border e-commerce with strong promotion, to support enterprises to build the network of overseas marketing, payment and settlement and logistics, to build the value chains characteristic with mutual interaction inside and outside, the orderly flow of elements, effective rules connection, and market throughout the world.

VI. Major Tasks and Significant Measures of Commercial Development during the 13th Five-Year Plan Period

According to the overall deployment of economic and social development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period made by the Party Central Committee and the State Council, the Plan puts forward major tasks and significant measures of commercial development from nine aspects during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, which focus on the key and difficult points of commercial development with the improvement of quality and benefit of commercial development as the core.

To begin with, form a new system of commercial development. We are required to stress the systematicness and integrality of reform, adhere to market-oriented reform, highlight the structural reform, make efforts to promote the circulation system of domestic trade, the new system of open economy, free trade zones and other comprehensive pilot reforms, and strive to achieve many breakthroughs in building the new system of domestic trade circulation, forming new open system, creating legal, international and convenient business environment and in other aspects, stimulate the vitality of market subject, create a fair and competitive market environment, an effective and clean administrative environment and a fair and transparent law and policy environment.

Then, to enhance the informatization, standardization and intensification of the circulation. In terms of the informationization construction of the circulation, the action plan of "Internet + Circulation" is further implemented, the construction of e-commerce demonstration bases are advanced, the e-commerce entering into the community and the rural areas is promoted, the transformation and upgrading of traditional business is accelerated, and the on-line and off-line combination development is promoted. With respect to the standardized construction, we should improve circulation standard system, strengthen the implementation and application of the circulation standard, and promote the standardization of traceability systems of commercial logistics, agricultural cold chain logistics and key products taking the standardization of salver as a breakthrough point. For the intensive development, we will carry out the innovation action of wisdom supply chain, guide the circulation enterprise to finish the transformation of comprehensive service, develop the professional supply chain services companies, encourage the circulation company with advantages for merger and restructuring, and lead the middle and small-sized enterprises to improve the organizational degree of circulation.

Thirdly, to promote the upgrading of consumption structure. We should pay emphasis on the reinforcing of effective supply of consumption, accelerate the development of new point of growth of consumption in order to expand the structural upgrading brought by the service consumption to the key points, drive the quality consumption, develop green consumption, strive to create a safe, affordable and convenient consumption environment, guide the consumption changed towards the direction of intelligence, green, health and security, and consolidate and promote the basic role played by the consumption in the economic growth.

Fourthly, to implement the strategy of quality imports and quality exports. When we try every way possible to stabilize the growth of foreign trade, consolidate and increase the international market share, we should stand firm on structural adjustment and method of transformation, make the general trade strong, enhance the processing trade, promote the development of new operational type of foreign trade, further optimize the layout of the international market, domestic regional distribution, the structure of trade commodities, the structure of business entities and type of trading, accelerate the optimization and upgrading of commodity trade, enhance the international competitiveness of foreign trade, and vigorously develop the service trade at the same time.

Fifthly, to perfect the layout of cross-border investment. We are required to adhere to pay equal emphasis on bringing in and going out, expand the opening field, ease the market access, promote the innovative development of the national economic and technological development zone, actively and effectively introduce foreign capital, advanced technology and management experience, and enhance the quality and benefit of the utilization of foreign capital. We should optimize the market layout of foreign investment, promote the international cooperation on production capacity, and the manufacturing of equipment, support enterprises to expand foreign investment, and integrate into the global industrial chain, value chain and supply chain, accelerate the cultivation of a number of multinational companies with strong competitiveness, and constantly improve global resources and the capacity of market allocation.

Sixthly, to boost the construction of One Belt and Road. We should stick with the Qin-Cheng-Hui-Rong concept, adhere to the principles of co-consulting, co-construction and sharing, focus on the policy communication, facilities connection, smooth trade, accommodation of funds, communication with the people, promote the effective docking related to national strategy, market, industry and project, propel the construction of border economic cooperative zone, cross-border economic cooperation zone and oversea economic trade and cooperative zone, advance the practical cooperation in all fields of the economic and trade including the trade, investment and regional integration, create the community of interests, the community in responsibility and the community of common destiny, and build new overall opening-up pattern with the sea-land and internal-external linkage and two-way of east and west open.

Seventhly, to strengthen the opening of regional coordination. We should combine the overall strategy for expanding opening-up and regional development, the construction of One Belt and Road, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei synergetic development and the development of Yangtze Economic Zone, improve regional distribution of opening up, accelerate the opening and developing in border regions, expand internal and external inland opening, completely promote the coastal opening level, boost the collaborative open in border areas, inland areas and coastal areas. The cooperation among the Mainland and Hong Kong and Macao should be deepened to promote the integrated development of cross-straits economy.

Eighthly, to deepen the international economic and commercial relations of openness and tolerance and mutual benefit and shared profit. We are required to comprehensively implement the new ideas and new guidelines of the central government on the foreign work, propel the improvement of the reform of international economic governance system, build the high-standard network globally oriented in the free trade zone, actively participate in and promote regional and sub-regional cooperation, deepen bilateral economic and trade cooperation, and strengthen and improve foreign aid to promote the development of international economic order towards the equality and fairness, and win-win cooperation.

Last, to make an overall arrangement for the opening up and economic security. It is necessary for us to thoroughly implement the overall concept of national security, strengthen security risk prevention and response, improve export controls and industrial early warning system, strengthen the response to trade conflict and trade remedies, anti-monopoly and safety examination for the foreign investment, international cooperation on intellectual property and other works, improve the capacity of overseas risk prevention and control, enhance the international competitiveness during expanding opening up, and earnestly safeguard national economic security.

VII. Main Considerations for a Batch of Major Projects, Key Programs and Important Policies Proposed by the Plan

The Plan focusing on the promotion of development, improvement of level and making up disadvantage puts forward 26 key projects as the main emphasis for commercial development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period on the basis of deep research and demonstration.

The reinforcement of key projects supports the target tasks in six aspects. Firstly, to strengthen the support of the system and mechanism reform, highlight comprehensive pilot reform and the construction of interim and post-supervision system, and carry out key projects including the construction of pilot free trade zone and the construction of law enforcement system of business comprehensive supervision. Secondly, to strengthen the support of the development of modern circulation, focus on informatization, standardization, intensification of the circulation, and implement key projects including e-commerce entering into rural areas, the standardization of commercial logistics and innovation action of wisdom supply chain and other major projects. Thirdly, it is to strengthen the support of consumption upgrading, carry out key projects covering the transformation development of service industry of residential life, quality improvement actions, city construction of international consumption, and construction of traceability system of major products. Fourthly, it is to strengthen the support of construction of trading powerful nation, and implement key projects such as cultivation of trade brand, combined test for cross-border e-commerce, innovative development of service trade and so forth. Fifthly, it is to enhance the support of the development of cross-border investment, and carry out key projects including innovative development of national economic development zone, innovation of oversea economic trade and cooperative zone and other important projects. Sixthly, it is to reinforce the support of opening of regional coordination, combine with regional development strategy, and carry out key projects such as the integrated construction of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei markets, and business guide of Yangtze Economic Zone, the construction of along-border opening cooperation zones and so forth.

Significant polices attach more importance to making the market play a decisive role in allocating resources and to better playing the role of government, highlighting those measures including streamlining administration and delegating power, relaxing market access and other measures, and giving full play of the role of vitality and internal sources of growth of various market subjects. We should pay more attention to the accuracy and refinement of the policies, intensify the guidance and support for the new fields, new patterns and development of new operational types, and strengthen the support for the weaknesses and the development of short board. We should pay more emphasis on the complementary cooperation between the market and the government, and reinforce the leverage function of the government input, and play the guiding role of government funds to promote the cooperation between the government and social capital.