Analysis
BEIJING – With a series of meetings held by the Communist Party of China (CPC) leadership in recent days, the central authorities have sent a strong signal to keep the country’s economy stable.
The CPC leadership has since late April held three meetings to analyze the current economic situation, calling for the healthy development of capital and strengthening infrastructure construction, vowing to step up policy support to stabilize the economy.
ANALYZING ECONOMIC SITUATION
With the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical conflicts bringing more risks and challenges, the environment for China’s economic development has become increasingly complicated, grim and uncertain, according to a meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
The authorities should step up macro-policy adjustment and work hard to achieve their annual economic and social development goals, and keep the economy running within a reasonable range, according to the meeting.
The meeting called for faster implementation of policies that have already been formulated, noting that various monetary tools should be well utilized. All-out efforts should be made to expand domestic demand, give full play to effective investment, reinforce infrastructure construction and let consumption facilitate economic circulation.
On improving people’s livelihood, the authorities should stabilize and expand employment and ensure the operation of cities’ core functions. Smooth logistics nationwide must be ensured, while key industrial and supply chains, key infrastructure facilities as well as designated firms responsible for market supply during the epidemic should maintain normal operation, the meeting concluded.
CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT HIGHLIGHTED
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, called for efforts to regulate and guide the healthy and law-based development of capital and give play to the positive role of capital as a significant production factor while addressing a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Xi underlined theoretical research on capital under the new conditions, noting that regulating and guiding the healthy development of capital under the socialist system is a major theoretical and practical problem to be studied.
He called for paying attention to inclusiveness in economic development and fairness in primary distribution, ensuring that capital could gain proliferation and development by participating in social distribution. Efforts should also be made to focus more on safeguarding the distribution system in which distribution according to work is the mainstay, said Xi.
China should attract more international capital to invest and start businesses in the country with a high-quality market environment, Xi said, adding that efforts should also support and encourage Chinese capital and enterprises to go global.
BOLSTERING INFRASTRUCTURE
At the 11th meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs held late last month, Xi, also state president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for all-out efforts to strengthen infrastructure construction in the country’s building of a modern infrastructure system.
Infrastructure serves as a pillar for economic and social development, Xi said, urging the authorities to coordinate development and security, and optimize the layout, structure, functions and development models of infrastructure.
The authorities should improve the planning of waterways and the building of coastal and inland ports, and upgrade water transport facilities nationwide, the meeting said, while a smart grid must be developed, a series of new green, low-carbon energy bases built, and the oil and gas pipeline network should be fine-tuned.
Efforts should also go into strengthening the infrastructure construction for industrial upgrades in information technology, sci-tech and logistics, as well as building facilities for a new generation of supercomputing, cloud computing, AI platforms and broadband networks, said the meeting.
“China’s economy got off to a stable start in the first quarter and the development was in line with expectations,” said Zhao Chenxin, secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), noting that the economy will soon be back on track thanks to efficient coordination between epidemic containment and economic development. – Xinhua
