Unsurprisingly, 2,884 NPC deputies fully approved the government work report provided during the session, as well as the report on the implementation of the 2024 plan for national economic and social development and the 2025 plan, a report on the execution of the central and local budgets for 2024 and the central budget for 2025, and other documents.
Business as usual? Not really.
Suppose one goes through the tedious process of reading some of these many texts in bureaucratic Chinese that the congress regularly produces. In that case, it becomes clear that this People’s Congress was the expression of a long overdue change in economic policy by the Chinese Communist Party: from a supply policy to a demand policy, from prioritizing investment promotion to prioritizing increased consumption, and from promoting exports to promoting domestic demand. Of course, such an economic policy turnaround is not named. Nevertheless, it does not require much reading between the lines to get the message and to understand the underlying reasons.
For example, already in the second paragraph of the government report by Premier Li Qiang, the CCP’s number two, it was clearly stated that: “Over the past year, in the face of complex and challenging developments marked by mounting external pressures and growing domestic difficulties, we, the Chinese people of all ethnic groups, have overcome difficulties” before happily continuing “… and continued to forge ahead under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.” (Quotes are from the official NPC website, English version)
Which Chinese premier or CCP leader has previously given so much prominence to ‘growing difficulties at home’? These difficulties are not only the result of “changes in the international environment”, but also appeared because “some deep-seated structural problems that had been building up in the country for years came to a head. Weak public expectations and other issues compounded sluggish domestic demand, and natural disasters like floods occurred frequently in some parts of China. All this added to the difficulty of maintaining economic and social stability.”
The party and government in China are very careful to maintain the image of unquestionable stability, so the public acknowledgment of a serious concern about the country’s stability is a remarkable statement. Chinese friends with big ears have repeatedly told your humble editor that “behind the curtain,” serious power struggles are going on, and many well-known economists have questioned the proclaimed Chinese GDP growth numbers. However, China is pictured in Western media normally as the most stable society among the Big Three: USA, Russia, and China.
To restart the economy and certainly also to support “social stability,” it was announced that the new public debt would rise from three to four percent of GDP this year, resulting in USD 1,640 billion in new debt used mainly for new social programs set up so that citizens throughout the country have more confidence, will accordingly consume more, and will be less inclined to blame the government for the lackluster economic situation.
It is heart-warming for the tourism industry to learn that in the 2024 report and again in this year’s report, tourism is mentioned as one of the areas next to health, culture, and sports, where more of the consumption potential is to be “unlocked.”
The Chinese government focuses, of course, on domestic tourism consumption. However, with more money to spend in their AliPay account, outbound tourists are also bound to appear more often in your neighborhood, helping the beloved international arrivals figure surpass the level of 2019 for the first time in 2025.
SOURCE: COTRI Weekly Newsletter