ROME - The upcoming 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China will make strategic arrangements for the overall advancement of China's reform and opening up, Italian experts said on Monday.

Over the past decades, China has made significant achievements, but continues to face a series of challenges that need to be addressed through further reforms, Vittorio Emanuele Parsi, a noted professor of international relations at the Catholic University of Milan, said.

"For a country of over 1.3 billion people, the biggest issue is how to make the jump from developing to advanced economy, which requires increased efforts to tackle the many contradictions and disparities that undermine stability," he told Xinhua.

However, the strength of China's economy based on a wise combination of state planning and private businesses can withstand the crisis better than in other systems, Diliberto noted, calling himself "very confident" in the ability of CPC leadership to handle key challenges.

The upcoming congress will be convened under fundamental topics for the future of China, that should spare no effort in advancing the well-being of its entire people while seeking to build a conservation culture, he said.

In fact, in the current times of economic globalization and political multi-polarization, changes in one country cannot but influence others, especially for a major country like China, said Giorgio Prodi, an economics professor at the University of Ferrara.

Prodi, who is the director of a new program launched at Bologna University to form young managers able to build bridges between Asia and Europe, was impressed by China's ability to "resist external pressures and foster stability over the past years."

Meanwhile, he noted, both inner and external conditions have changed. China is not a top low labor cost country anymore, and the global economy has entered a crucial difficult phase.

"In the present changed overall scenario, such a huge and populous country has not any historical cases to take as an example," Prodi said.

However, China's fundamental strong point is the awareness of being a "great country able to look at the future with confidence in a time when confidence has become a very scarce good in international markets," he pointed out.

In his view, this thorough understanding of the experiences China has gained over past decades and the new achievements it will make can help the world's second-largest economy plug the gaps.

"China is very capable to catch up quickly to new technologies for developing the high quality products and service businesses its economy is in need of," he said.

This thirst for expertise is also expected to provide new collaboration opportunities at the international level, and also for this reason the upcoming congress should matter to the rest of the world, the professor added.

China's future steps can open up new perspectives both for the foreign companies wanting to invest in China and for Chinese businesses intentioned to develop abroad, in various fields including the cultural one, Prodi said.