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Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed support for the country's elderly and vulnerable youth in a New Year's speech that acknowledged the pressures on some of the country's 1.4 billion people.
somethingTrump's speech comes after his economic planners struggled for much of the past four years to restore consumer confidence or address high youth unemployment and slow wage growth.
In a televised speech on Tuesday evening, the 71-year-old leader, speaking in front of a large outline of the Great Wall of China, said the issues of employment, income growth, elderly care, child care, education and health care “are always on my mind.” “.
Xi said the July meeting of the Chinese Communist Party leadership was a “clear call for further comprehensive deepening of reform.”
“Enabling people to live happy lives is the top priority,” he said. “Every family hopes that its children will have a good education, its elderly will have good care services, and its youth will have more development opportunities.”
China's economyThe world's second-largest economy after the United States recorded growth of 4.8 percent in the first nine months of the year, lagging behind Beijing's official target of about 5 percent.
The weak sentiment and deflationary pressures follow a series of blows, from the pandemic and a years-long housing market decline, to Xi's reassertion of Communist Party control over large swaths of China's business landscape.
Xi on Tuesday also repeated a veiled warning about international support for Taiwan. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has not ruled out the use of force if Taipei refuses to unify indefinitely.
“Compatriots on both sides of the strait are one family. No one can sever the ties of blood and kinship between us, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification,” Xi said.
Xi has increasingly directed state support to manufacturing and high-tech industry, raising investment in electric cars, batteries, semiconductors and artificial intelligence, while continuing the production of Chinese-made biotechnologies.
On Tuesday, he highlighted China's progress in technological self-reliance and breakthroughs in areas including computer chips, artificial intelligence and space exploration.
A series of policy easing measures announced by Beijing since September, including some real estate and stock market support, have been seen as a sign that Xi Jinping's administration is shifting its focus toward boosting domestic demand.
Reflecting these changes, the World Bank last week revised its forecast for China's GDP growth next year up 0.4 percentage points to 4.5 percent.
However, China this year has been rocked by a series of mass killings and stabbings that some experts blame on rising social tensions. Fan Weiqiu, a 62-year-old man, was sentenced to death last week after being found guilty of driving his car into a crowd of people in Zhuhai, southern China, in November, killing at least 35 people, in the worst mass killing incident. In the country since 2016. A decade.
Ahead of a series of national holidays, Beijing has begun urging local governments to expand seasonal cash assistance to people facing economic hardship, including unemployed youth.
Kelvin Lam, an economist at macroeconomics firm Pantheon, said that although the grants would not have a significant impact on the broader economy, they could support social stability and consumption in poor rural areas.
China's economic outlook has been further weakened by tense relations with the United States.
Under President Joe Biden, the United States has restricted China's access to computer chips, tightened restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States and tightened sanctions on Chinese companies over their trade with Russia in the wake of the all-out invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier on Tuesday, Xi told Russian leader Vladimir Putin that “strategic coordination” between China and Russia continued to reach higher levels under their leadership, according to a New Year message published by China's official Xinhua news agency.
(Additional reporting by Wenjie Ding in Beijing, Cheng Ling in Hong Kong and Catherine Hill in Taipei)
