BUENOS AIRES - Jorge Castro, the head of Argentina's Strategic Planning Institute, has spoken highly of China's structural reforms and the bid to attract more foreign investment.

In an interview with Xinhua, Castro said that China is "seeing the pushing between new, high-tech companies and traditional industries, which do not add value, such as steel, iron and coal."

Last week, the Chinese government issued a statement from its Central Economic Work Conference which said the structural reforms would continue to advance in 2017.

The world's second-largest economy said it will seek to make headway in five key reforms over the coming year, including reducing excess production capacity, and lowering company costs, among others.

Castro emphasized that these will bring about a competition between new, high-tech enterprises and large state-owned enterprises with negative or nil rates of return.

Castro said workers in such companies should be diverted to new technology companies.

"The crucial element of the further opening-up will be free trade zones(FTZs), following the example of the first one, which opened in Shanghai," said Castro.