Not setting specific growth target leaves room for tackling longterm risks: experts

The focus on strengthening the domestic economy and indigenous technological innovation is the answer to internal and external challenges, and the recent steady recovery in the Chinese economy and promising prospects for growth in 2021 offered sufficient room for policymakers to address these challenges to ensure long-term high-quality growth, analysts said.

Internal focus

In line with a long-standing tradition, the meeting from Wednesday to Friday was held in Beijing, underscoring the steadiness in China’s policy-making process in stark contrast to a chaotic world facing a raging COVID-19 pandemic.

At the meeting, top policymakers concluded that facing severe and complex international situations, daunting domestic reform and development tasks, particularly with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, China maintained strategic focus and made an accurate judgment and decisive actions that produced a “historic” outcome.

The meeting also pointed out that there remains uncertainties in the pandemic and internal environment, and the conditions for China’s economic recovery are not as solid, adding that many risks are not to be neglected, calling for thoroughly preventing various risks and challenges.

The meeting stressed the overall theme of forming the widely discussed “dual circulation” development paradigm that puts heavy emphasis on the massive domestic market to ensure long-term high-quality growth. Under that overarching theme, the meeting outlined efforts in eight areas of priorities.

“The most important theme could be the Chinese government’s focus on reforms on the demand side in the next five years” to boost domestic demand, Wei Jianguo, former Chinese vice minister of commerce and executive deputy director of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, told the Global Times, adding that bolstering the internal economy would help address domestic and foreign risks.

Part of the priority to root out domestic risks, the meeting also stressed the need to strengthen anti-trust regulations to prevent “disorderly expansion of capital,” signaling tightening regulations for the financial technology sector.

A closely watched item from the Central Economic Work Conference was clues into the officials’ target for growth pace for the coming year. In line with recent adjustments, the meeting did not offer any indication of a specific target next year by only calling for striving to maintain economic operations at “reasonable range.”

“I don’t think there will be any mention of a specific growth target this year. Rather, it will stick to stabilizing six areas,” Li Chang’an, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics’ School of Public Administration, told the Global Times, referring to officials’ stated goals of stabilizing the jobs market, financial market, trade, foreign capital, investment and expectations.

That would also offer Chinese policymakers sufficient room to make major policy shifts to address risks to the domestic economy, analysts noted.