China’s leaders yesterday wrapped up a week-long key conclave at which they admitted more was needed to revive a sluggish economy battered by an ailing housing market, poor domestic demand and record-high youth unemployment.
Top officials have been upfront about the myriad challenges China is facing, admitting that a modest 5 percent growth goal would not be easy and that “hidden risks” are dragging the economy down, but they have supplied few details about how they plan to tackle the problems.
Officials have also moved to strengthen powers to deal with threats to their rule and tightened a veil of secrecy around policymaking, scrapping a traditional annual news conference and vowing to include national security provisions in a raft of new laws.
Photo: AFP
Delegates to the National People’s Congress, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), gathered at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to rubber-stamp legislation at 3pm as the conclave came to an end.
Among the pieces of legislation approved was a revision to the Organic Law of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, which state media has said would aim to deepen the “leadership” of the Chinese Communist Party over the government.
Delegates also approved the nation’s state budget, and the national economic and social development plan for this year. Only a handful of the body’s almost 3,000 delegates voted against any of the motions.
The tightly choreographed event capped a week of high-level meetings that have been dominated by the economy, which last year posted some of its slowest growth in years.
Ministers on Saturday pledged to do more to boost employment and stabilize the nation’s troubled property market.
“Workers face some challenges and problems in employment, and more effort needs to be made to stabilize employment,” Chinese Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Wang Xiaoping (王曉萍) told a news conference.
Chinese Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong (倪虹) said that fixing the property market — which long accounted for about one-quarter of China’s economy — remained “very difficult.”
Despite official pledges of fresh support, analysts say they are yet to see the kinds of big-ticket bailouts the flagging economy needs if it is to rebound.
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