China holds Central Economic Work Conference to plan for 2024

BEIJING -- The annual Central Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing from Monday to Tuesday as Chinese leaders decided priorities for the economic work in 2024.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered an important speech at the conference.

In his speech, Xi reviewed the country's economic work in 2023, analyzed the current economic situation and arranged next year's economic work.

It was noted at the meeting that China's economy has achieved a recovery, with solid progress made in high-quality development in 2023.

To further revive the economy, China still has to overcome some difficulties and challenges, including lack of effective demand, overcapacity in some sectors, lackluster social expectations, certain risks and hidden problems, bottlenecks in the domestic circulation, as well as rising complexity, severity and uncertainty of the external environment, the meeting said.

It is important to be more mindful of potential dangers and to effectively respond to and solve these problems, said the meeting.

Overall, favorable conditions outweigh unfavorable factors in China's development, and the fundamental trend of the economic recovery and long-term positive outlook has not changed, the meeting said, urging stronger confidence.

Regarding the economic work next year, the meeting called for efforts to pursue progress while ensuring stability, consolidate stability through progress, and establish the new before abolishing the old.

It urged the introduction of more policies that will help stabilize expectations, growth and employment, as well as active endeavors to promote the transition of growth models, structural adjustment, and quality and efficiency improvement, so as to consolidate the foundation of stable economic development with positive outlook.

The country should strengthen counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments of macro policies and continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy with strengthened innovation and coordination of policy tools, the meeting said.

The meeting called for reasonably expanding the scope of special local government bonds as capital funds, implementing policies on structural tax and fee reductions, and mainly supporting scientific and technological innovation as well as the development of the manufacturing sector.

It stressed efforts to maintain reasonable and sufficient liquidity, and keep the scale of social financing and money supply in line with the expected targets for economic growth and price levels.

The financial institutions should be guided to scale up support for scientific and technological innovation, green transformation, inclusive finance for small and micro businesses, and digital economy, according to the meeting.

It also urged efforts to ensure that overall financing costs steadily drop and keep the RMB exchange rate basically stable at a reasonable and balanced level.

Measures should be taken to strengthen the consistency of macroeconomic policy orientation, beef up coordination in fiscal, monetary, employment, industrial, regional, science and technology, and environmental policies, and include non-economic policies in the assessment of macroeconomic policy consistency to ensure that the policies form synergy.

The meeting listed priorities in nine aspects as follows:

-- Sci-tech innovation should lead the development of a modern industrial system.

-- More should be done to expand domestic demand.

-- Reforms in key areas should be deepened.

-- High-standard opening up should be expanded.

-- Risks in key areas should be prevented and defused in a continuous and effective manner.

-- Sustained efforts should be made to do a good job in the work related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

-- Efforts should be made to facilitate integrated urban-rural development and coordinated regional development.

-- More should be done to advance ecological conservation and promote green and low-carbon development.

-- Efforts should be made to secure and improve people's livelihoods.