FILE PHOTO: A labourer cleans the window of an office building near a residential complex (back and reflection) under construction in Shenyang, Liaoning province May 17, 2013. REUTERS/Stringer
September 29, 2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will need a plethora of reforms if it is to make a new economic strategy that relies mainly on domestic consumption work, advisers to the Chinese cabinet said on Tuesday.
President Xi Jinping has proposed a “dual circulation” strategy for the next phase of economic development in which China will rely predominantly on “domestic circulation”, to be supported by “international circulation”.
“To rely mainly on domestic circulation, we indeed face a very arduous task,” Yao Jingyuan, the former chief economist for the country’s National Bureau of Statistics, told a briefing.
“Fundamentally we must rely on reforms, and we need to deepen reforms.”
Lin Yifu, a second adviser to the cabinet, said China’s new economic strategy is not a short-term measure to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic or tension with the United States.
Both Lin and Yao said China needs to push market-based reforms to improve economic efficiency, encourage land and residency reforms to support urbanisation, and implement measures that would tackle the gap in incomes.
(Reporting by Kevin Yao; writing by Se Young Lee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Edwina Gibbs)
