At the National People’s Congress (NPC) session that opened on Friday, Chinese Communist Party Premier Li Keqiang proposed a target of more than 6 percent economic growth. And China’s defense budget, which is a concern for the outside world, will also increase by 6.8% compared to last year.
The fourth session of China’s 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) opens this Friday (March 5) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. At 9 a.m., Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), led the Politburo Standing Committee into the conference hall to the sound of Music, with Xi sitting in the center of the front row of the conference bureau. NPC Chairman Li Zhanshu presided over the meeting, and Premier Li Keqiang delivered the “Government Work Report”.
The outside world is concerned about the reappearance of the economic growth target that disappeared from the Government Work Report last year. Li Keqiang proposed that economic and social development in 2021 is expected to grow by more than 6% of GDP. He said: “The main development goals for this year are GDP growth of more than 6%, urban employment of more than 11 million people, urban survey unemployment rate of about 5.5%, consumer price increases of about 3%; stable import and export quality, the basic balance of payments; steady growth in residents’ income, further improvement in the quality of the ecological environment; unit GDP energy consumption by about 3%, and emissions of major pollutants continue to fall; Food production remains above 1.3 trillion jins.”
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the opening ceremony of the National People’s Congress on March 5, 2021.
Is economic growth expected to be higher this year?
Wu Qiang, a former lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Tsinghua University, believes that the top level is relatively conservative in setting this year’s economic growth target at 6 percent. I believe it is still a conservative target setting,” he told the station. External expectations for China’s economic growth this year are actually higher, with some foreign economists as well as some institutions predicting that economic growth could be 7-8 percent. Because based on the role that China may play in the economic recovery, that is, China’s special position among the global supply chain, it may benefit more in the global economic recovery, the strongest global economic growth.”
Li Keqiang’s work report also mentioned that China’s gross domestic product reached 101.6 trillion yuan last year, up 2.3 percent from the previous year, making it the only major economy in the world to achieve positive economic growth. Translated at the average annual exchange rate, China’s economy is expected to account for more than 17 percent of the world economy in 2020.
Commander, a finance scholar at Shandong University, told the station, “Although the Chinese government did not set a target for annual GDP growth for the first Time at last year’s two sessions, we saw that Li Keqiang just mentioned last year’s GDP growth rate of 2.3%, a figure the Chinese government still flaunts as an economy that is actually growing positively.”
However, Li also mentioned the difficulties and challenges China faces this year. He said the new crown pneumonia (CCP virus) Epidemic is still spreading around the world, the international situation is more unstable and uncertain, the world economic situation is complex and severe, there are still weak links in the prevention and control of domestic epidemics, the foundation of economic recovery is not yet solid, consumer spending is still constrained, investment growth is not strong enough, small and medium-sized enterprises and individual businessmen have more difficulties, and the pressure to stabilize employment is greater.
Strong export officials say: the annual growth target can be achieved
With the global epidemic easing, China’s import and export trade volume increased rapidly in the fourth quarter of last year. Looking ahead to the first quarter of this year, He Lifeng, head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, said Friday (5) that from the situation in January and February this year, China’s economy is still continuing the trend of the second half of last year, especially since the fourth quarter, maintaining a stable and positive trend. This year’s January-February growth should exceed 50%, but the current difficulties, problems, blockages in the tertiary sector is relatively more, will vigorously help enterprises to solve these problems, the annual target tasks can be achieved.
Hebei scholar Zhou Di, on the other hand, believes that the economic situation this year is not optimistic. He told the station, “I’m afraid it’s hard enough for him to set the economic growth target at 6% this year. Because once the dividend (income from nucleic acid testing) brought by the epidemic is gone, a lot of unemployment and so on, I personally imagine that this year’s economy is back down a lot of pieces than last year.”
Chinese Communist Party military budget increased by 6.8% scholars: can not be taken seriously
The official report on the Chinese government’s draft defense budget released immediately after Li Keqiang’s “Government Work Report” shows that this year’s defense budget amounts to 1,355.3 billion yuan, an increase of 6.8% over last year.
In this regard, scholar Zhou Di believes that on the surface, the Chinese Communist Party military has seen flat growth in military spending in recent years, but much of the spending on the military is hidden and there is no way for outsiders to calculate it: “In China, much of the military spending is not counted as military. huawei, for example, develops a set of technologies, which in a sense is not counted in military spending. In non-democratic countries, so-called military spending is for the outside world.”
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