Official: China capable of maintaining stable growth, high-quality development

A view of the Qinzhou port in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on Oct 27, 2021. (Photo/Xinhua)

China will continue to maintain steady economic growth and remain steadfast in its pursuit of high-quality development, despite some current difficulties and challenges, said Sheng Laiyun, deputy head of the National Bureau of Statistics in an interview.

Although the recent COVID-19 epidemic situation in the country has weighed on its economy, giving rise to slight contractions in certain economic indicators, China’s economy still enjoys strong potential and great resilience, with fundamentals underpinning the economy’s stable development and sound momentum remaining unchanged, according to Sheng.

Regions hit hard by COVID-19, such as Shanghai and Jilin Province in northeast China, have gradually brought the epidemic situation under control since the beginning of May, and have begun to resume work and production in an orderly way, evidenced by an increase in their electricity output and power consumption.

“New growth drivers are on the rise and the country will not shift its direction in high-quality development,” Sheng remarked.

Sheng is also optimistic about China’s economic performance throughout the year because the country has a resilient supply chain supported by its growing productive forces, the world’s most promising consumer market with its population of 1.41 billion, as well as various policy instruments to leverage moving forward, and more importantly, it has the marked strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics that the country will draw upon, along with social harmony and stability.

With regards to the main tasks at present, he noted that it is vital to ensure that the economy operates in a reasonable range. China has vowed to adhere unwaveringly to its dynamic zero-COVID policy, and guard against inbound cases and domestic resurgences, in order to consolidate the hard-won results of its prevention and control efforts.

He also highlighted the role of pro-growth policies and giving full play to effective investments. "History has shown that expanding infrastructure investment is the most effective and fastest way out of short-term economic hardship," he said, adding that China still has broad space for infrastructure investment.

“Measures such as tax refunds, tax and fee cuts, the deferral of social security contribution payments, special funds, and inclusive finance lending to micro and small businesses will shore up market entities,” he said.

Besides, he highlighted efforts to stabilize employment, ensure people’s livelihood, and keep supplies and prices stable, particularly in critical areas such as food and energy.

Sheng noted that weakening market expectations is a pressing problem at the moment, with the Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) for China's manufacturing industry and the index for non-manufacturing business activity in April standing at 47.4 percent and 41.9 percent, respectively.

Sheng believes this can be ascribed to increasing uncertainties in the world economy accompanied by higher interest rates, rising costs, high inflation, and sluggish global growth, among other concerns, in addition to geopolitical events such as the Ukraine crisis, as well as certain domestic reasons such as shrinking demand and logistics hindered by recent efforts to control the epidemic.

To cope with these problems, Sheng said that the country needs to maintain a stable macroeconomic performance to accomplish the main targets and tasks for the year, step up efforts to ease the difficulties encountered by market entities, roll out relevant measures at an early date, and continue reforms to improve the business environment for enterprises. He also stressed the continuity, consistency, and sustainability of macro policies.