Xi Jinping signals growth is ‘top priority’ in speech acknowledging China’s strains

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Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized support for the country’s vulnerable elderly and youth in a New Year’s address that acknowledged some of the pressures the 1.4 billion-strong population faces.

XiHis remarks come after economic planners have struggled for the past four years to restore consumer confidence or deal with rising youth unemployment and slow wage growth.

In a televised address Tuesday evening, the 71-year-old leader, speaking in front of a large motif of the Great Wall, said employment, income growth, care for the elderly, child care, education and health care “are always on my mind.”

Xi said the Chinese Communist Party leadership meeting in July made “a clear call for more comprehensive deepening of reform”.

“Enabling people to live happy lives is the top priority,” he said. “Every family hopes that children can get a good education, the elderly can get good care services, and the young can have opportunities for further development.”

China’s economyWhich is the world’s second-largest after the United States, recorded growth of 4.8 percent in the first nine months of the year, lagging Beijing’s official target of about 5 percent.

Weak sentiment and inflationary pressures have hit one after the other, from the pandemic and years of slumping property markets to Xi’s re-establishment of Communist Party control over large parts of China’s business landscape.

Xi on Tuesday repeated a thinly veiled warning about international support for Taiwan. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has not ruled out using force if Taipei rejects unification indefinitely.

“The countrymen on both sides of the Straits are one family. No one can break our blood ties and kinship, and no one can stop the historic trend of national reunification,” Xi said.

Xi has increasingly steered state support for high-tech manufacturing and industry, ramping up investment in electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors and artificial intelligence, and pursuing the production of critical technologies made in China.

On Tuesday, he highlighted China’s progress in technological self-reliance and advances in fields including computer chips, AI and space exploration.

A series of policy-easing measures announced by Beijing since September, including some property and stock market support, are seen as a sign that the Xi administration is focusing on boosting domestic demand.

Reflecting these changes, the World Bank last week revised its forecast for China’s GDP growth next year by 0.4 percentage points to 4.5 percent.

However, China has been rocked this year by rising massacres and stabbings that some experts blame on rising social pressures. Fan Weiqiu, 62, was sentenced to death last week after he was convicted of driving his car into a crowd in Zhuhai, southern China, in November, killing at least 35 people, the country’s worst massacre. a decade

Ahead of a series of national holidays, Beijing has begun urging local governments to expand seasonal cash handout supplies to people facing economic hardship, including unemployed youth.

Kelvin Lam, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that while the handouts would not have a significant impact on the wider economy, they could increase social stability and consumption in poor rural areas.

China’s economic outlook has weakened further due to tensions with the US.

The United States under President Joe Biden has limited China’s access to computer chips, clamped down on Chinese investment in the United States, and imposed sanctions on Chinese companies for trade with Russia in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier on Tuesday, Xi told Russian leader Vladimir Putin that “strategic coordination” between China and Russia had reached a high level under their leadership, according to a New Year’s message published by state news agency Xinhua.

Additional reporting by Wenji Ding in Beijing, Cheng Leng in Hong Kong and Catherine Hill in Taipei