Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A1

March 17, 2016

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

Premier rules out a hard landing

By Wang Yanlin | March 17, 2016, Thursday | Print Edition

THERE are more hopes than difficulties for the world’s second largest economy, Premier Li Keqiang said yesterday, while ruling out the possibility of China’s hard landing.

“China faces increasing downward pressure due to sluggish global demand and its own imbedded problems during the economic restructuring,” Li told a press conference at the conclusion of the annual session of the National People’s Congress. “But as long as the country sticks to the course of reform and opening up, we are confident we will sustain growth momentum and prevent the so-called hard landing.”

China’s economy grew 6.9 percent in 2015 compared to the year before, its slowest rate in 25 years though still outperforming most other countries.

For this year, the government has set a growth target of between 6.5 percent and 7 percent. Last year it was “around 7 percent.”

“We are confident about China’s long-term growth prospects, and such confidence is based on solid fundamentals derived from the huge potential of the Chinese market and the immense creativity of the Chinese people,” Li said.

He said the market can unleash more vitality given that the government continues to streamline red tape while strengthening supervision.

China is conducting supply-side structural reform, he added, aiming to withstand downward pressure and stimulate market demand through simplifying administration, delegating government powers and cutting corporate taxes.

“China has seen new growth dynamics,” Li said. “Despite the economic slowdown, we have kept the unemployment rate steady by the creation of more than 13 million new jobs last year in cities and towns.

“Meanwhile, the service sector has become a major driver of China’s growth. In it, high technology has played a bigger role, helping to accelerate the restructuring of traditional industries and sectors.”

Over the past 12 months, China has rolled out policies to bolster economic performance, including cuts in the reserve requirement ratio to allow banks more cash at hand, and fiscal investment in key infrastructure projects.

“There is no such measure as one cure for all, because China’s economy has one distinguishing feature of divergence — you may see double-digit growth rate in some places while feel recession in some others,” Li said.

“What we are doing is to formulate new growth engines based on different conditions in different places. The government has plenty of policy instruments in reserve to cope with small or short-term growth fluctuations, and there are more hopes than difficulties.”

Responding to a question on the pension fund, Li said some local governments had failed to pay into it, but the problem was limited and the central government would assume responsibility if the local government had done its best.

Li also said the long-awaited Shenzhen-Hong Kong stock connect scheme will be launched this year. The scheme will allow investors to trade on both bourses under a quota system and is seen a move toward a closer relationship between the financial markets of Hong Kong and China’s mainland.

In 2014, China established the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect to open up the mainland capital market to the outside world.

Nation


 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend