China's Two Sessions: unveiling roadmap to tackle challenges
Chinese leaders have unveiled plans to grapple with challenges of 2025, while presenting a detailed roadmap, setting targets-cum-priorities for combating trade wars, dealing with deflation and giving a tremendous boost to science.
On March 5, Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang gave the annual report – 2025 Government Work Report (2025 GWR) – on behalf of the State Council to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's parliament, at the opening of the Two Sessions in Beijing.
The Two Sessions, or Lianghui, is the popular name for back-to-back meetings of two of China's major political bodies – the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People's Congress (NPC), China's legislature.
Foreign investors watched the Two Sessions to get insightful details of China's political and economic landscapes, its priorities as well as overall policy direction.
The 2025 GWR consists of a 5% GDP growth target, industries' priorities and initiatives to boost consumption, attract foreign investment, mitigate financial risks and the like. The report expatiates on 10 main tasks for this year, which include raising consumption, developing and upgrading the industry, developing science and innovation, promoting implementation of landmark reform measures, expanding high-level opening up, preventing and resolving risks in key areas, fostering rural revitalisation, raising new urbanisation and regional coordinated development, encouraging carbon reduction, pollution control, green expansion and growth and finally ensuring and improving people's livelihoods while enhancing social governance efficiency.
According to The Economists, the world's two superpowers hold state-of-the-nation addresses back to back. Li Qiang, China's prime minister, gave his annual report in Beijing. A few minutes later, US President Donald Trump began a fiery speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington. The back-to-back speeches offered a stark contrast. Both would have been better if each had more closely resembled the other.
When it comes to trade wars, Trump hit China with a fresh 10% tariff on the day before Li's speech, following a similar duty a month earlier. Combined with older levies, they mean Chinese goods now face an average American tariff of about 34%, reckons Larry Hu of Macquarie, an Australian bank. China's government swiftly retaliated by imposing tariffs on a narrower range of American goods, from chicken to soybean. It also added more American firms to a blacklist that could curb their dealings with Chinese firms.
Leading regional expert and Centre for South Asia and International Studies Islamabad Executive Director Dr Mehmoodul Hassan Khan said Chinese policymakers have rightly set several development goals for 2025, targeting a gross domestic product (GDP) growth of around 5%, an increase of around 2% in the consumer price index and a reduction of about 3% in energy consumption per unit of GDP, which reflect the resilience and promising prospects of its current and future development.
Obviously, the 5% GDP growth will put China at the top of the global economy and will further enhance its role, contribution and utility during 2025 and beyond.
Evidently, high qualitative opening-up, high-quality development, innovation, modernisation, qualitative industrialisation, scientific intensification for breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields, research and development (R&D) advancements in frontier and disruptive technologies and accelerating forward-looking planning for major science and technology projects would be the way forward.
According to many official and international publications, the real GDP potential of China is 8% till 2035, so 5% growth during 2025 and beyond is easily achievable. Diversification of exports, heavy reliance on new energy vehicles (NEVs), artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled phones, personal computers (PCs), humanoids, commercial aerospace and a low-altitude economy, further consolidation of domestic demand and consumption, application of a more proactive fiscal policy and an accommodative monetary policy will gear the economy in the right direction during 2025 and beyond.
What's more, China's heavy reliance on the strategic emerging sectors such as bio-manufacturing, quantum technology and 6G will be further accelerated.
China will be able to mitigate all threats of geopolitics and geo-economics because it possesses the world's most sustainable, developed and diversified industrial chains and manufacturing clusters, producing 30% of the global manufactured goods. Their unparalleled scale and efficiency make Chinese products highly competitive and difficult to replace in global markets, even after the high tariffs.
Thus, an ideal combination of industrial strength and entrepreneurial spirit and a series of response strategies aimed at helping companies stabilise orders and expand markets will be supportive and productive.
The readjustment of its supply chains and routing goods through Southeast Asia or Mexico for re-export to the US demonstrates the flexibility and ingenuity of Chinese businesses in navigating complex trade environments.
The western media's onslaught on China's economy is false, fake and fabricated propaganda, stemming from their blind political hype, perpetual economic bias and manoeuvred geopolitical prejudice because in the last four decades China's economy has remained strong, stable and sustainable (8-10% GDP growth), surpassing all western economies.
The 5% growth in international trade last year sees China maintaining its position as the world's largest trader of goods. China's foreign trade hit an all-time high of 43.85 trillion yuan ($5.98 trillion) in 2024, an increase of 5% year-on-year. Its total exports grew 7.1% to 25.45 trillion yuan while imports increased 2.3% to 18.39 trillion yuan.
The writer is a staff correspondent