China’s leaders yesterday wrapped up a week-long key conclave at which they admitted more was needed to revive a sluggish economy battered by an ailing housing market, poor domestic demand and record-high youth unemployment.
Top officials have been upfront about the myriad challenges China is facing, admitting that a modest 5 percent growth goal would not be easy and that “hidden risks” are dragging the economy down, but they have supplied few details about how they plan to tackle the problems.
Officials have also moved to strengthen powers to deal with threats to their rule and tightened a veil of secrecy around policymaking, scrapping a traditional annual news conference and vowing to include national security provisions in a raft of new laws.
Photo: AFP
Delegates to the National People’s Congress, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), gathered at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to rubber-stamp legislation at 3pm as the conclave came to an end.
Among the pieces of legislation approved was a revision to the Organic Law of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, which state media has said would aim to deepen the “leadership” of the Chinese Communist Party over the government.
Delegates also approved the nation’s state budget, and the national economic and social development plan for this year. Only a handful of the body’s almost 3,000 delegates voted against any of the motions.
The tightly choreographed event capped a week of high-level meetings that have been dominated by the economy, which last year posted some of its slowest growth in years.
Ministers on Saturday pledged to do more to boost employment and stabilize the nation’s troubled property market.
“Workers face some challenges and problems in employment, and more effort needs to be made to stabilize employment,” Chinese Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Wang Xiaoping (王曉萍) told a news conference.
Chinese Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong (倪虹) said that fixing the property market — which long accounted for about one-quarter of China’s economy — remained “very difficult.”
Despite official pledges of fresh support, analysts say they are yet to see the kinds of big-ticket bailouts the flagging economy needs if it is to rebound.
STILL COMMITTED: The US opposes any forced change to the ‘status quo’ in the Strait, but also does not seek conflict, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said US President Donald Trump’s administration released US$5.3 billion in previously frozen foreign aid, including US$870 million in security exemptions for programs in Taiwan, a list of exemptions reviewed by Reuters showed. Trump ordered a 90-day pause on foreign aid shortly after taking office on Jan. 20, halting funding for everything from programs that fight starvation and deadly diseases to providing shelters for millions of displaced people across the globe. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said that all foreign assistance must align with Trump’s “America First” priorities, issued waivers late last month on military aid to Israel and Egypt, the
France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and accompanying warships were in the Philippines yesterday after holding combat drills with Philippine forces in the disputed South China Sea in a show of firepower that would likely antagonize China. The Charles de Gaulle on Friday docked at Subic Bay, a former US naval base northwest of Manila, for a break after more than two months of deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. The French carrier engaged with security allies for contingency readiness and to promote regional security, including with Philippine forces, navy ships and fighter jets. They held anti-submarine warfare drills and aerial combat training on Friday in
COMBAT READINESS: The military is reviewing weaponry, personnel resources, and mobilization and recovery forces to adjust defense strategies, the defense minister said The military has released a photograph of Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) appearing to sit beside a US general during the annual Han Kuang military exercises on Friday last week in a historic first. In the photo, Koo, who was presiding over the drills with high-level officers, appears to be sitting next to US Marine Corps Major General Jay Bargeron, the director of strategic planning and policy of the US Indo-Pacific Command, although only Bargeron’s name tag is visible in the seat as “J5 Maj General.” It is the first time the military has released a photo of an active
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
RSS