Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region should leverage its strategic position as the gateway for China's westward opening-up, and continue expanding high-level opening-up efforts this year, several National People's Congress (NPC) deputies and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee members from Xinjiang suggested. They also urged the region to ramp up economic exchanges with Central Asian countries as well as exploring markets in ASEAN, the Middle East and Africa.

"We expect Xinjiang, building on its advantage, to establish a global industrial and supply chain that could further link the West with the East," Liang Yong, CPPCC member and a member of the China Association for Promoting Democracy, one of China's eight non-communist political parties, told the Global Times.

Liang is also the director of Xinjiang's cotton industry development leadership office. 

In 2024, Xinjiang's foreign trade expanded by 21.8 percent to reach 435.11 billion yuan ($59.88 billion), customs data showed, with the growth rate being 16.8 percentage points higher than China's national average growth rate. 

"From breaking the 200-billion-yuan mark in 2022 to surpassing the 400-billion-yuan threshold in 2024 in foreign trade, Xinjiang achieved three consecutive leaps of 100-billion-yuan steps in three years, demonstrating an explosive growth trajectory," Liang said.

Li Lan, a deputy of the NPC who is also the director of Xinjiang's Alashankou customs technical center, also put forward motions regarding measures to promote Xinjiang's port trade facilitation and enhance its customs clearance efficiency, according to a report by Xinjiang-based newspaper Bingtuan Daily.

Li offered suggestions on "optimizing the business environment, strengthening digital empowerment and enhancing the modernization of port infrastructure," so as to create new momentums for the internal and external opening-up of ports in Xinjiang. 

In addition to opening-up efforts, NPC deputies and CPPCC members also made motions and proposals covering the high-quality development of strategic industries in Xinjiang, such as cotton farming and mining. 

Liang, the CPPCC member, submitted three proposals for this year's two sessions, with two involving supporting the development of cotton farming in the Xinjiang region. Liang proposed that China should continue to implement and improve its cotton-pricing mechanism, and stabilize domestic cotton production so as to shore up the international competitiveness of China's textile and apparel industries.

Liang added that "the scale advantage of China's cotton and related industries does not align with its international influence in standard-setting and value distribution, as such influence remains largely controlled by countries such as the US and UK." 

As such, China's cotton and textile industries as a whole need to "focus on doing their own work," and advancing a more innovative and efficient system, while expanding into new fields, he said.

Liang said that during the two sessions, he will focus on topics involving how technological innovation could elevate China's comprehensive industrial competitiveness. 

"I believe that the promotion and application of smarter agriculture, powered by artificial intelligence, will further reduce the cost of cotton cultivation in the Xinjiang region and enhance the sector's competitiveness," he said.

Ma Huadong, a CPPCC member and chairperson of the China National Democratic Construction Association's Xinjiang regional committee, also submitted proposals on the development of Xinjiang's mineral resources, which were "based on multiple field visits and investigations at the grassroots level" from mining exploration sites to enterprise production workshops, the Bingtuan Daily report noted.