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.

An important goal of building an open economy is to stimulate improvement of domestic institutions and laws for higher efficiency and greater competitive strength in the global market, said the president.

Foreign investment has played a significant role in China’s economic development, promoting reasonable allocation of resources and driving market-oriented reforms, he told the meeting.

China should continue to make good use of foreign investment to advance supply-side structural reforms, upgrade the economy, and catch up with global technology development, Xi said.

He urged faster efforts to lift restrictions on foreign access to and ownership in sectors such as child care, elderly care, architectural design, accounting, auditing, commerce, logistics, e-commerce, general manufacturing and services.

The “negative list” approach on foreign investment management, which has been adopted in the country’s pilot free trade zones, should be expanded to the whole nation as soon as possible, he said.

A negative list approach identifies sectors and businesses that are off-limits or restricted for investment.

Xi also called for faster work to unify laws and regulations on domestic and foreign businesses and make new fundamental laws on foreign investment.

Laws, rules, and policies out of tune with the overall direction and principle of opening up should be abolished or revised within a time limit, and national treatment in laws and policies should be granted to foreign-funded companies after they enter the market, the president said.

Xi urged megacities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen to take the lead in improving business environment, demanding moves to reduce inspections and fines on companies and ban illegal fee charging.

He stressed the importance of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR), calling on authorities to better laws and regulations, improve the quality and efficiency of intellectual property examinations, and speed up institutional improvement for IPR protection related to emerging sectors and new business types.

Wrongdoing should be punished more severely so that IPR infringers will pay heavy prices, said the president.

Speaking of the financial sector, Xi said those areas that help protect consumers’ rights and interests, promote orderly competition, and prevent financial risks should be opened up faster.

He demanded efforts to advance opening-up of the capital account in an orderly manner, and steadily push the yuan to become an international currency.

The yuan’s exchange rate formation mechanism should be improved, and the currency’s value should be kept basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level, Xi said.

To keep up with the pace of financial opening up, China must have a strong regulatory capability, the president noted.

He urged financial regulators to learn from international experience, address weak links and improve the way of regulation.

On foreign trade, Xi stressed expanding imports while stabilizing exports to promote balance of payment under the current account.

He demanded measures to make foreign trade more liberalized and convenient, saying institutional costs of import should be lowered, quarantine and custom clearance be streamlined, and that companies’ complaints be better addressed.

Authorities must study reducing tariffs on certain consumer goods and encourage the import of specialty products, Xi said.

A market environment featuring fair play should be created in the country, giving businesses equal treatment in tariff collection, import quarantine and marketing to let consumers and the market have the say, according to the president, who is also head of the leading group.

The meeting was also attended by Premier Li Keqiang, who is deputy head of the group, and Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, a member of the group.

A political documentary on China’s ongoing reform will be aired starting Monday on China Central Television, the state broadcaster.

The ten-episode documentary, “Jiang Gaige Jinxing Daodi,” or carrying the reform through to the end, summarizes the progress and achievements of the overall reform initiated after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012.

It features authoritative theoretical discussions on the reform, as well as reform examples from the grassroots.

Topics of the episodes include economy, politics, social management, Chinese culture, environment, the armed forces and the Party’s self-governance.

With the 19th CPC National Congress scheduled for the second half of 2017, the documentary is expected to inspire CPC members and the Chinese people.

It will also be available on the state broadcaster’s new media platform.

More than 70 cubs have been born this year at the world’s largest breeding center for Siberian tigers in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province as the breeding season is coming to an end.

Siberian tigers usually give birth between April and June, but staff at the center said they still expect to welcome more than 100 Siberian tiger cubs in 2017.

The fluffy, mischievous cubs are in good heath, according to breeders at the Siberian tiger park under Heilongjiang Hengdao Hezi Cat Family Breeding Center Monday. They added that the animals have become much stronger and shown aggressive behavior in just a few months.

The center controls the mating to ensure the number of cubs born each year will have superior genetics, said Liu Dan, chief engineer of the park.

Siberian tigers are one of the world’s most endangered species. They predominantly live in northeast China and eastern Russia.

China has been trying to save the species through captive breeding programs. When the center opened in 1986, it had only eight tigers, now it is home to more than 1,000.

An aviation company in Tianjin Monday received China’s first top-level full flight simulator.

The simulator was delivered by ACCEL (Tianjin) Flight Simulation, a joint Sino-U.S. venture between Haite High-Tech and Rockwell Collins, established last year.

A flight simulator recreates aircraft flight and the flying environment for pilot training, aircraft design and other purposes. The simulator is level D, meaning it can act as a perfect substitute for real planes in training pilots.

Previously, all simulators at this level in China were imported at a cost of over ten million U.S. dollars per unit.

“The successful delivery of China’s first level D simulator has filled the blank in the field domestically,” said Li Biao, president of Haite.

The northern municipality of Tianjin has developed a national level aviation industry base due to the rapid development of China’s aviation industry and domestic market demand for aviation training.

Authorities in northeast China’s Jilin Province have found signs of a critically endangered leopard subspecies.

A dead roe deer was spotted last week in a tree farm administered by Tianqiaoling Forestry Bureau, when forest worker Xu Degui was picking mushrooms there. Judging from the scratches and the remaining corpse, experts concluded that it was killed by an Amur leopard, also known as the Far Eastern leopard.

It is not the first time that Amur leopards have been found at the tree farm. In July 2009, forestry experts twice found footprints belonging to the animal. Two months later, Amur leopards were found to have attacked domestic sheep there. In 2014, an Amur leopard was spotted eating a roe deer there.

As one of the world’s most endangered species, the Amur leopard was put under top national protection in 1983. There are fewer than 70 Amur leopards in the world, mostly living in Russia’s Far East, China’s northeastern provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang, and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula.