Tanner Greer and Nancy Yu
In early March, global investors turned their eyes toward Beijing, where 2,977 delegates from across China had gathered for the annual session of the National People’s Congress. Here, Chinese Premier Li Qiang would deliver the annual “Report on the Work of the Government.” Here, the priorities that must guide the activities of the Chinese state over the coming year would be proclaimed. Here—or so financiers at home and abroad badly hoped—the Chinese government would declare its plan to rescue China’s economy.
But there were few comforting signs. The 2023 report had placed “expanding domestic demand” as the top priority for that year, responding to the damage done by zero-COVID policies, a bureaucracy paralyzed by purges and confused by an unfavorable economic environment, and a property bubble too large to pop. The 2024 report did not follow suit. Instead, it laid out a road map not for economic recovery but for wider, and more aggressive, targets.
Ahead of “expanding domestic demand,” the new report prioritizes two other goals. First, the Chinese government must “[strive] to modernize the industrial system and [develop] new quality productive forces at a faster pace.” Second, it must “[invigorate] China through science and education and [consolidate] the foundations for high-quality development.”
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