By He Yin, People’s Daily
The recently concluded China’s Central Economic Work Conference sent a clear and optimistic signal that China’s economy will brave the wind and the waves and sail steadily into the future.
The international community has closely followed and positively interpreted the outcomes of the conference, believing China will inject greater stability and momentum into the world economy.
Over the past year, in the face of a complicated and challenging environment of increasing external pressure and growing internal difficulties, China’s economic journey has been extraordinary with encouraging achievements. The Chinese economy has maintained overall stability and made steady progress, the high-quality development has been solidly promoted, and the main goals and tasks of China’s economic and social development are expected to be successfully completed.
Notably, the decisive deployment of a package of incremental policiesat the meeting held by the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Sept. 26 has effectively boosted social confidence and led to a remarkable economic recovery.
This year, the Chinese economy is expected to grow by around 5 percent and continue contributing around 30 percent to the world economic growth. International observers see this as a testament to the strong resilience and immense potential of the Chinese economy.
China’s economy is underpinned by a stable foundation, multiple advantages, strong resilience, and great potential, and the supporting conditions and fundamental trends for long-term sound economic development have not changed.
China is a large economy with a massive domestic market and a robust industrial ecosystem, which helps create a “dualcirculation” pattern that allows its domestic and international economic activities to reinforce each other. The benign interactions between the Chinese and international markets lay a solid foundation for China’s steady and sustained economic progress.
China boasts a comprehensiveindustrial system with diverse business entities that are highly adaptable to changing environments, and Chinese households have a high savings rate that provides resilience against economic fluctuations. These factors collectively underline the remarkable resilience of the Chinese economy.
China remains a developing country that faces challenges of unbalanced and inadequate development. However, these very challenges also signify the country’s untapped growth potential and serve as powerful drivers for further progress.
The world economy is facing manydifficulties and challenges, and trade protectionism, unilateralism, and geopolitical tensions are clearly on the rise, which have heightened uncertainty in economic operations worldwide. China has the conditions and room to strengthen counter-cyclical adjustments, which provides strong policy support for achieving annual goals and tasks.
China’s Central Economic Work Conference this year unveiled a host of effective policy measures targeted at stabilizing public expectations and boosting market confidence.
Next year, China will implement a more proactive fiscal policy and shift to a moderately loose monetary policy for the first time after having a prudent monetary policy for 14 consecutive years. The country will vigorously boost consumption, improve investment efficiency, and expand domestic demand on all fronts. It will also drive the development of new quality productive forces through scientific and technological innovation and build a modernized industrial system.
International analysts observed that China has all the tools it needs to adapt to its new geopolitical environment, accelerate domestic transformation, and bolster economic dynamism.
Cultivating new quality productive forces for high-quality development
China is solidly advancing high-quality development and continuing to lead the efforts toimprove the performance of the world economy.
New quality productive forces have provided crucial support for China’s high-quality development. China has made significant advancements in scientific and technological innovation, such as integrated circuit, artificial intelligence, and quantum technology. Chinese traditional industries have been embracing high-end, intelligent and green development.
Besides, the country has built almost 10,000 digital workshops and smart factories, among which over 400 have been cultivated as Chinese national-level smart manufacturing demonstration factories.
The Central Economic Work Conference this year has made a comprehensive arrangement to drive the development of new quality productive forces. It emphasized the need to strengthen basic research and strive for breakthroughs in key and core technologies, adopt forward-thinking arrangements for major technological projects, conduct large-scale demonstration for the application of new technologies, products, and scenarios, launch an AI Plus initiative, and nurture industries of the future. These measures highlight the tremendous, untapped potential in China’s high-quality development.
Expanding high-standard opening up for win-win cooperation
China has been expanding opening up andstriving to build a world economy characterized by openness, contributing to win-win cooperation among countries.
The Central Economic Work Conference this year prioritized “expanding high-standard opening up while keeping foreign trade and foreign investment stable” as one of the key tasks for the coming year, which once again reaffirmed China’s commitment to opening up and global cooperation.
This year, China has been steadily expanding voluntary and unilateral opening up in an orderly manner and enhancing institutional opening up.
It has removed all market access restrictions for foreign investors in the manufacturing sector, and proactively aligned with high-standard international economic and trade rules. Besides,it has so far signed 23 free trade agreements with 30 countries and regions, accounting for a third of its foreign trade.
Additionally, China has given all the least developed countries with which it has diplomatic relations zero-tariff treatment for 100 percent tariff lines. From now to 2030, China’s imports from other developing countries are expected to top $8 trillion.
By consistently liberalizing and facilitating trade and investment, China is providing new opportunities for the world with its new modernization achievements.
Moving forward, China will strive to transform all positive factors into actual achievements in development andpromote sustained economic recovery. It will work together with other countries in the spirit of “promoting global solidarity,”contributing to global economic development and the modernization of all countries featuring peaceful development, mutually beneficial cooperation and common prosperity.
