President Xi and Premier Li lay out plans for China.
Earlier this month, Beijing hosted the so-called “Two Sessions” gathering of officials from all over the country. There were some 3,000 delegates of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s nominal legislature, plus an additional 2,000 members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultive Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body. Though mostly a rubber stamp for the decisions of Xi Jinping and the close allies he put into place earlier, the announcements made in the last few weeks make clear Chinese leadership’s priorities and plans.
President Xi talked a lot about putting people first. All leaders do, communist or elected. He described the people as the decisive force for building China. He added that by people he meant all peoples and ethnic groups in China. Despite this predictable boiler plate, the plans he and his fellow speakers advanced placed their emphasis elsewhere – on the military and on what could be called the international contest for technological dominance.
Goals for overall economic growth and development were modest, especially by Chinese standards. The government forecasts 5.0% real growth this year and the creation of 12 million new urban jobs to bring the unemployment rate below 5.5%. Although this growth expectation is fast by the standards of most developed economies, it constitutes the acceptance of a major slowdown in the pace of advance in China. It is especially modest in the wake of three years in which the Chinese people suffered the lockdowns and quarantines associated with Beijing’s zero-Covid policies.
Xi and company may even be setting things up to revise their growth expectation downward.
