With the global recovery still fragile and protectionism on the rise, China's resolve to open its door even wider will serve as a much-needed anchor of stability for the world economy and help foster a more balanced and inclusive pattern of growth for all, officials, experts and business leaders said on Thursday.

The opportunities China offers the world now extend well beyond access to its vast market, with green development and technological innovation creating new avenues for shared growth, they said, calling on economies to move beyond bloc-based confrontation and jointly build a more open and inclusive world economy.

"Shared growth and inclusive development should be at the heart of global economic rebalancing," said Mondher Mimouni, director of the Market Development Division at the International Trade Centre.

Mimouni was speaking at a parallel session of the Hongqiao International Economic Forum, held alongside the ongoing 9th China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University and former senior adviser to the United Nations, said the rebalancing is already visible in the shift of economic weight from the West toward Asia.

"Asia is returning to the center of the world stage," Sachs said, adding that the region could account for 50 to 60 percent of the global economy in the coming years.

The shift is not only geographic. It is also technological, Sachs said, as the world moves from the steam and oil eras toward green energy. China's strengths across clean-energy supply chains leave it well placed to lead the transition over the coming decades.

That transition is also opening up development opportunities beyond China.

Martin Jacques, a former senior fellow at the University of Cambridge, said China's cooperation in green technologies is creating new opportunities for industrialization elsewhere.

"Rebalancing the global economy requires an open world economy built on mutual benefit and cooperation, rather than tariff barriers and decoupling," Jacques said.

That call for greater market liberalization resonated with the World Openness Report 2026, which was unveiled at a separate news conference and symposium on world opening-up the same day.

The report showed that China's openness index rose from 0.5891 in 1990 to 0.7551 in 2025, an increase of 28.18 percent and one of the strongest improvements worldwide. By contrast, the World Openness Index fell 1 percent year-on-year to 0.7453 in 2025, its steepest decline since 2016.

"Even as global openness contracted sharply, China continued to open wider, moving up the rankings while maintaining a historically high level of openness," said Liao Fan, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of World Economics and Politics.

Liu Ling, chief regional leader of Philips China, said, "We see a clear signal that China will further advance high-standard opening-up and share development opportunities with the world."

Wang Xuekun, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said innovation is emerging as another dividend of opening-up.

"China's innovation is a source of dynamism for global development," Wang said, adding that the country is pursuing innovation through greater openness and working with global partners to address shared development challenges.

zhangchenxu@chinadaily.com.cn