As the Two Sessions approach, the signal of 'doing more practical work' is inspiring by Dong Shaopeng
Dong Shaopeng is a highly reputable financial commentator. Link to his commentary in Simplified Chinese: https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/4GnzoyMkfp1
Global Times Editor’s Note: The Fourteenth Session of the National People’s Congress and the Second Session of the Fourteenth National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference will open in Beijing on the 4th and the 5th of March respectively. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and is a crucial year for achieving the goals of the ‘14th Five-Year Plan’. What topics will this year’s National Two Sessions focus on and what signals will be released? Starting today, this newspaper will publish a series of articles to interpret the National Two Sessions from different perspectives for readers.
The National Two Sessions of 2024 are about to convene. Amidst the increasing downward pressure on the global economy, the growing instability in international geopolitics, and China’s economy entering a critical phase of climbing uphill, there is great anticipation for the Two Sessions.
Currently, China’s domestic economic development is still in a period of potential accumulation of transformation and recovery. Various sectors such as finance, real estate, foreign trade, and new economies are facing different degrees of transformation and innovation challenges. Overall, the development of new and old driving forces is intertwined and has not yet entered a fully stabilised stage. Recently, important signals for promoting development and deepening reform and opening up in the next stage have been released in relevant meetings, which can be seen as a ‘precursor’ to the Two Sessions. In my opinion, four directions are particularly important:
1. Identifying the entry points to effectively enhance industrial development and actively expand market demand. On the 23rd of February, the Fourth Meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission focused on issues such as large-scale equipment renewal, replacing old consumer goods with new ones, and effectively reducing the logistics costs of the whole society. Since the end of December last year, the State Council’s executive meetings have successively focused on themes such as ‘deepening the people-centred new urbanisation’, ‘developing the silver-haired economy to enhance the well-being of the elderly’, ‘promoting artificial intelligence to empower new industrialisation’, ‘comprehensively promoting rural revitalisation’, ‘further optimising the business environment’, and ‘making greater efforts to attract and utilise foreign investment’. These series of measures are aimed at identifying work focuses, opening up paths, implementing and refining policies, enhancing industrial development levels, expanding investment, and consumption, and increasing employment.
2. Strengthening the guarantee mechanism for scientific and technological innovation, improving the efficiency of scientific and technological innovation, and promoting the continuous emergence of new industries, new models, and new driving forces. Empowering various key industries with technological innovation, stimulating new consumption and investment fields, and accelerating the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. Since the beginning of this year, the central government has made deployments to accelerate the development of new productive forces. The Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year deployed nine key tasks, with the first one being ‘leading the construction of a modern industrial system with technological innovation’. Whether it is expanding domestic demand, opening up at a high level, doing well in rural work, promoting ecological civilisation construction and green, low-carbon development, all require the support of technological innovation. In the face of new situations in global industrial competition and comprehensive national strength competition among countries, we especially need to increase investment in science and technology, strengthen the guarantee mechanism for scientific and technological innovation, and improve the resilience and security level of the industrial chain and supply chain. We need to deeply cultivate and upgrade the vast domestic market, shape emerging industry clusters, open up new industrial tracks, and promote the formation of a good ecology for the integrated development of industries.
3. Promoting the construction of a financial powerhouse, improving the financial management and development system, and releasing the vitality of financial support for the real economy. China has already established a solid foundation in the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, with ample room for market development. However, objectively speaking, the financial system and financial regulation have not yet fully met the needs of high-quality economic development. There are still significant risks and insufficient regulatory measures and manpower in local investment platforms, small and medium-sized financial institutions, stock markets, and real estate finance. From the perspective of regulation, there are problems such as insufficient systematic thinking and lack of regulatory leverage. On the 16th of January, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasised at the opening ceremony of a seminar for provincial and ministerial-level main leaders to promote high-quality development of finance that ‘we must accelerate the construction of a modern financial system with Chinese characteristics’, ‘we must focus on preventing and resolving financial risks, especially systemic risks’, and ‘we must improve the efficiency and capability of financial resource allocation in our country through expanding opening-up’. Summarising the experiences and lessons of the second half of last year, we should pay more attention to coordinating the regulation of the capital market and other financial fields, and pay more attention to the organic feedback and interaction mechanisms between the capital market and the overall economic system. We cannot just talk about the stock market or financing alone. The executive meeting of the State Council on February 23rd deployed further work to prevent and resolve the risks of local government debt, demonstrating a high degree of attention to financial stability work.
4. Further enhancing the consciousness of serving the people and the awareness of people’s well-being, strengthening the coordination of economic development and social benefits, and ensuring that high-quality development benefits the broadest masses of people, effectively enhancing the sense of gain of the people. In the critical period of economic and social transformation and development, it is particularly important to enhance the consciousness of serving the people and the awareness of people’s well-being. Such consciousness should be reflected in every aspect of industrial development, technological innovation, market circulation, financial operation, administrative regulation, and judicial law enforcement. Optimising the business environment and correcting performance views are closely related. The more upright the atmosphere, the fairer the system, and the more stable and transparent the policy, the better the atmosphere for all sectors to work hard and achieve more results.