Simone McCarthy and Nectar Gan
China has set an ambitious target of “around 5%” growth for 2025, in a defiant show of confidence as it braces for the fallout from escalating American tariffs on its export-driven economy.
The target “underscores our resolve to meet difficulties head-on and strive hard to deliver,” Premier Li Qiang, China’s No. 2 official, said on Wednesday as he delivered the government work report at the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s rubber-stamp legislature.
Li gave his state-of-the-union-like speech shortly before US President Donald Trump began his first address to Congress in his second term, a split-screen moment between the two great power rivals, with both leaders laying out what they each see as the best way forward to solidify their country’s position atop the global economy.
Inside Beijing’s cavernous Great Hall of the People, the picture was of tightly controlled unity. Xi and his top leadership paraded into the main auditorium to a standing ovation, while Li’s speech was punctuated with unanimous applause — a sharp contrast to the scene at the US capitol, where several Democratic lawmakers walked out in protest and a longstanding member of Congress was removed for protesting Trump’s address.
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