China to further optimize business environment, open wider to foreign investment: Xi

BEIJING, July 17 (Xinhua) -- China should improve its investment and market environment, accelerate opening up to the outside world and lower operating costs, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Monday.

The country should "create a stable, fair, transparent and predictable business environment, and speed up efforts to build an open economy in a bid to promote the sustainable and healthy development of the Chinese economy," Xi said at a meeting of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs.