Day: December 13, 2020

(Xinhua)08:58, August 27, 2020

BEIJING, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) — Chinas development is entering a new stage. This is the latest assessment made by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, on the future prospects of the worlds second-largest economy as it prepares economic and social development plans for the next five years.

The next five-year plan, the 14th in a row, is now very much in the spotlight. The plan period (2021-2025) will mark the first five years of Chinas new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country and marching toward the second centenary goal, according to Xi, who delivered his comments this week at a symposium with experts on economic and social work.

How will China navigate this new stage of development? What will Chinas economic and social roadmap be in post-epidemic era? Here are some takeaways from the symposium.

FORWARD-LOOKING PLANNING

Drawn up every five years since 1953, the five-year plan is a major feature of Chinas governance system, setting growth targets and defining economic and social development policies to ensure national strategies keep pace with the times.

At the symposium this week, Xi, reiterating that the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, stressed the adoption of a long-term perspective, grasping the trend of the times and extensively pooling wisdom to study new circumstances and make new plans.

To reflect the forward-looking vision, when the Communist Party of China Central Committee meets in October to outline the 14th Five-Year Plan, a longer-term vision for 2035 will also be put up for discussion, envisioning a period during which the countrys socialist modernization is expected to be basically achieved.

Experience has shown that conducting mid- to long-term planning would allow the market to play a decisive role in the allocation of resources, while allowing the government to play a better role, Xi said at the symposium.

The 14th Five-Year Plan will be a critical plan, drawn up at a critical time, said Wang Changlin, president of the Academy of Macroeconomic Research of the National Development and Reform Commission, who attended the symposium.

China should be fully aware of both the increasingly complicated external environment and its distinctive advantages, staying strategically focused and preparing for a protracted war, said Wang.

AN OPEN DUAL CIRCULATION

First introduced in May this year, the new development pattern known as dual circulation, which takes the domestic market as the mainstay while letting domestic and foreign markets boost each other, has been placed high on the authorities agenda.

Describing the new pattern as a strategic choice, Xi said it is by no means a closed domestic loop, but an open dual circulation that involves both the domestic and foreign markets.

He also reaffirmed that opening-up is a fundamental national policy, noting that China will see its status continue to rise in the world economy, with closer ties, and the country will provide more extensive market opportunities for other countries.

Lu Ming, a professor with Shanghai Jiaotong University who was another speaker at the symposium, said Xis remarks have sent a clear signal dispelling concerns that China will shift its focus from opening-up to the domestic market.

Rather, Chinese policymakers are fully aware of the importance of further opening-up and are determined to follow the path of reform, he said.

The new development pattern, with the domestic market being the mainstay, is in line with Chinas efforts to expand domestic demand in the past decade, according to Jia Kang, chief of the China Academy of New Supply-side Economics.

Taking the domestic market as the mainstay does not mean zero exports, but greater volatilities and uncertainties in foreign trade within an unstable international environment, said Jia, emphasizing that Chinas status as the worlds factory will not be changed.

INNOVATION AS KEY

In pursuing the new development pattern, scientific and technological innovation, especially making breakthroughs in core technologies, is widely regarded as the key to shaping domestic circulation.

At the symposium, Xi underscored creating new growth momentum through scientific and technological innovation, vigorously enhancing the capability to conduct innovation independently, and achieving breakthroughs in key and core technologies as soon as possible.

To this end, he urged giving full scope to enterprises as the main actors in technological innovation, and vigorously cultivating and introducing world-class talent and scientific research teams.

Innovation-driven development on technological fronts perfectly fits the needs of creating the dual-circulation pattern with the domestic market as the mainstay, said Lu, who noted that development propelled by domestic demand will particularly boost the well-being of the Chinese people.

Echoing Xis call, Robin Li, chairman and CEO of Chinas internet giant Baidu, pledged to share the companys data and computing power with millions of developers and partners to push for an industrial upgrade.

By being creative and helping them solve problems and encourage innovation, we can stimulate the vitality of the (companys) ecological chain, said Li.

(Xinhua)09:21, September 02, 2020

NEW YORK, Sep. 1 (Xinhua) — After reopening in late February and early March, Chinas factories began an export surge that is still accelerating. Exports soared in July to their second-highest level ever, nearly matching the record peak last December, according to an article Pandemic only fueled Chinas export machine published on The New York Times on Tuesday.

According to the article, China has seized a much larger share of global markets this summer from other manufacturing countries, consolidating a dominance in trade that could last long after the world begins to recover from the pandemic.

With low-cost, skilled labor and efficient infrastructure, as well as state-owned banks lending extra loans to cope with the pandemic to small and large businesses, China is showing strong export capacity, which has not been affected by the COVID-19 and American tariffs, the article said.

According to the article, most economies except China are currently in recession. China is making what the worlds hospitals and housebound families need right now: personal protection gear, home improvement products and lots of consumer electronics. Consumers around the world have been buying everything from computer screens and stereo systems to power tools and home saunas, many of which are made in China.

The article gives examples. Hongyuan Furniture in the southern city of Guangzhou has hired 50 extra workers after export orders for its home saunas more than doubled this year. Hongyuan said it has not yet encountered any new competition from home sauna manufacturers based elsewhere despite facing 25 percent American tariffs for the past two years.

Trueanalog in the southern city of Zhongshan has ruled out moving production of its top-end stereo speakers to the United States, its main market, or to Vietnam, where wages can be even lower. Whether it is magnets, paper cones or rubber foam, China dominates the worlds production of the components that go into the speakers they are putting together.

China has the largest supply chain of the parts you need to make a speaker, and China has the most stable, affordable labor force, the article quoted Philip Richardson, the American owner of Trueanalog, as saying.

Rajiv Biswas, the chief Asia economist at IHS Markit, a global data and consulting firm, said that Chinas share of world exports rose to nearly 20 percent in the second quarter of this year, up from 12.8 percent in 2018 and 13.1 percent last year, according to the article. China now appears strong in exports across many sectors. Chinas trade surplus has increased sharply this summer, especially in July.

(Global Times)14:24, August 29, 2020

China added 23 cutting-edge technologies to a list of restricted exports items, according to a government circular posted on Friday night. The revision, initially revealed when China-US tensions erupted, strengthens the regulatory foundation for possible export controls regarding countries and regions taking a hostile stance against China, said a trade expert.

Technologies now face tighter export controls, in areas such as vegetation breeding, metal 3D printing and advanced drilling tools and software used in oil and gas extraction, according to a new catalogue issued by Chinas Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The new catalog is aimed at better regulation of such exports, boosting scientific advancement and international economic and technological cooperation and safeguarding national economic safety, an official with MOFCOMs Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services said in a late Friday statement.

Technology exports refer to Chinas transfer of technologies including the transfer of patent rights and technology secrets to overseas markets though trade, investment or economic and technological cooperation.

The nation categorizes tech exports into free, restricted and prohibited exports. Free tech exports are subject to contractual registration afterward, while the export of restricted technologies requires a license.

The ministry noted that It has been more than 10 years since the last revision and Chinas steadily improving science and technology level has made a timely update necessary.

The original list of items for which exports are prohibited came into effect on November 1, 2008. It was not until July 2018 that MOFCOM unveiled draft revisions to the catalogue for control of both imports and exports.

A statement from MOFCOM showed the ministry was seeking public comments on the revisions through August 22, 2018.

In 2013, Chinas technology exports were worth $20 billion, less than half that of technology imports. In 2019, technology exports by China reached $32.1 billion, almost equal the value of technology imports, data from the ministry showed.

It could be said that the flare-up in trade tensions between China and the US in 2018 motivated the government to revise the catalogue, Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who closely follows the China-US trade frictions, told the Global Times on Friday.

The restricted export items comprise mostly Chinas indigenous intellectual properties that could only come to fruition in China where its unique institutional advantages ensure hefty commitments to technologies that would be unavailable in other economies, he said.

Cutting-edge technologies used in third- and fourth-generation nuclear equipment and materials, sea-borne satellite launching pads, and engineering equipment and machinery used in building manmade islands in deep water were also included.

Technologies in which Chinese products have an edge, such as drone technology, ultra-high voltage transmission and clean coal power generation, were also among the added items.

Sensitive technologies including quantum encryption and early warning technology based on massive data harvesting were also listed.

Exporters of these technologies will have to obtain a permit for technology transfers overseas, either via trade or investment.

The revised catalog could be comparable to the US Entity List in that it offers a regulatory basis for restrictions on business deemed detrimental to Chinas interests, according to Gao.

Whether a ban or restriction would be activated or not is left to Chinas discretion, meaning that markets where a China threat is being hyped could be subject to the restrictions, he reckoned.

While the impact of the revised catalog on Chinese exports is hard to predict for the time being, the resulting increased intellectual property protection is likely to boost exports of key items on the list, as overseas buyers may only secure the items from the Chinese market, Gao added.

Also announced on the same day were nine items that were previously banned or restricted and that will now have loosened export controls.

(Xinhua)20:28, September 04, 2020

BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called for joint efforts to overcome difficulties to promote the development and prosperity of global trade in services and push for global economic recovery as early as possible.

He made the remarks while addressing the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services via video.