BEIJING – Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for reform in the country’s key annual political season, dispelling considerations about whether China’s reforms are “stalled” or whether its economy is “losing steam. “
“We want to plan primary measures to deepen reforms and give strong impetus to promoting China’s progress and modernization,” President Xi said at the annual sessions of China’s Most Sensible Legislative Framework and Most Sensible Policy Advisory Framework, or the “Two Sessions,” which ended on Monday.
Since Xi took the top office more than a decade ago, China has entered a “new era.” The country’s economic strength has grown, and its international influence has continued to rise. Reform is the hallmark of this era.
Faced with a multitude of challenges, China is now in a critical position to push through its reforms.
REFORM WILL NOT STOP, OPENING-UP WILL NOT CEASE
Xi is regarded as another outstanding reformer in the country after Deng Xiaoping.
The two leaders faced the same mission — to modernize China, but against strikingly different backdrops.
When Deng initiated reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, China’s GDP capita was only about 200 U. S. dollars. Their reform efforts started almost from scratch.
In 2012, when Xi was elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, China had become the world’s second-largest economy, with a per-capita GDP of over 6,000 dollars. But growth was shifting gears and many advantages, including the once-low labor costs, had started to diminish.
Instead of resting on the laurels of his predecessors, Xi promised to continue reforms, and he knew how complicated it would be.
“The simplest component of the task is done to everyone’s satisfaction. What is left are bones that are hard and difficult to chew,” he said.
Over the past decade, more than 2,000 reform measures have been rolled out, enabling the country to eliminate extreme poverty, promote integrated urban-rural development, fight corruption, support businesses, boost innovation, and push forward a “green revolution.”
Thanks to reform measures, China’s economy has only sustained physically powerful growth, but it has also more than doubled since 2012, cementing the country’s global prestige as a major contributor to growth.
China is at a critical juncture lately, with Xi leading the country toward an ambitious “Chinese modernization” while facing major challenges such as downward economic pressure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging protectionism and repression in Western countries. related to the real estate sector, local government debts and some small and medium-sized monetary institutions.
Xi reiterated the importance of reform at a consultation to review the organization of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee earlier this year. A few weeks later, after the “two consultations”, he pushed to deepen reforms in various sectors “to eliminate barriers. ” that hinder the advance of new quality productive forces”.
The role of reform was also highlighted in this year’s government work report.
It dedicates a segment to deepening reform, focusing on the systems that underpin the socialist market economy, such as asset rights coverage, market access, fair competition, and social credit. “Ultimately, high-quality progress depends on reform,” he writes.
Looking back, Xi’s commitment to reform has been consistent.
When he was not even 16, he was sent to Liangjiahe village in Shaanxi Province to do farm labor. There, he experienced hunger. Deng initiated reforms, believing that China could not remain poor. Xi’s aspiration at that time was to ensure that his fellow villagers could have enough to eat.
Like Deng, Xi’s reformist impulse also stems from the people’s aspiration for a better life. The reform measures he implemented in Liangjiahe, including the advent of biogas, the status quo of a blacksmith shop, and the opening of a shop promoting basic needs, were aimed at the livelihoods of the villagers.
Xi’s commitment to reform was influenced by his father, Xi Zhongxun, a champion of reform and opening-up. In 1978, the senior Xi was sent to south China’s Guangdong Province as a principal official, and later helped build the country’s first special economic zones including Shenzhen.
Also in 1978, Xi Zhongxun commissioned Xi, a student at Tsinghua University, to conduct on-site studies on the formula of the contractual duty of families in Anhui Province. He filled an entire pocket notebook with notes, a collection he kept for many years. .
Xi’s reputation as a reformer was reinforced as his political career advanced.
In the early 1980s, he introduced reform experiments in impoverished Zhengding County in Hebei Province, starting with the testing of rural land contracts, making Zhengding the first in Hebei to adopt the tried and tested practice. in the southern provinces.
An article published in “China Youth” magazine in 1985 described the county’s transformation. It quotes a county Party secretary from a neighboring province, who visited Zhengding, as saying: “You don’t hear other people here chanting ‘reform’. Yet reform is falling everywhere.
“Looking back at those years, one of the things we achieved was liberating our thinking,” Xi said, reflecting on the reforms in Zhengding.
After Zhengding, Xi was assigned to Xiamen, a special economic zone in Fujian province, where Xi led the status quo of China’s first risk-sharing bank, Xiamen International Bank. After taking over as governor of Fujian, Xi led the reform of collective forest tenure, which later spread across the country. This initiative is seen as another revolutionary step for China’s rural areas after the system of family contractual duties.
During his stay in Zhejiang province, Xi proposed a cutting-edge initiative to promote progress through trade improvement. He actively supported personal business and encouraged other entrepreneurs to “come directly” to him on vital matters. He also extended Zhejiang’s reforms beyond the economic sphere. , addressing social, cultural and ecological aspects.
Xi’s reformist symbol has left a deep impression on foreign figures. In September 2006, Henry Paulson, then US Secretary of the Treasury, traveled to China and chose Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, as his first stop. He sees Xi as the “perfect choice” for his first assembly in China, describing him as “the kind of person who knows how to get things done beyond the finish line. “
Paulson later recounted that in a meeting with Xi in 2014, the Chinese leader said: “My fear is basically about reforms and similar issues. “
After assuming the Party’s top post in 2012, Xi’s first domestic inspection took him to Shenzhen, following in his father’s footsteps. There, he laid a flower basket at the bronze statue of Deng Xiaoping in Lianhuashan Park, declaring a firm commitment to reform: “Reform will not stop, and opening-up will not cease!”
The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, convened in 2013 under Xi’s leadership, is heralded as a milestone, much like Deng’s Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978, which ushered in the era of reform. The 2013 event marked the dawn of a new era of reform.
During the session, Xi highlighted a number of challenging situations facing China’s progress, adding corruption, unsustainable progress and environmental issues. He said that “the key to resolving these disorders lies in deepening reforms. “
The consultation adopted a resolution on “important issues related to the overall deepening of reforms”. A Spanish newspaper claimed that Xi had introduced the most far-reaching economic, social and administrative reforms in China in 30 years.
More than a month later, China announced the decision to establish the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, which Xi headed. This marked the first time in the Party’s history that a leadership body exclusively dedicated to reform was established at the central level. Later, this group evolved into the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, with Xi as its director.
VENTURING INTO THE MOUNTAIN DESPITE KNOWING THERE ARE TIGERS
Xi’s reforms are based on considered considerations stemming from his many years of practice, with a high-level set of opinions.
He invoked the ancient Chinese idiom of “rejecting the new in favor of the new” to call for action, arguing that reform and innovation are inherent cultural genes of the Chinese nation.
Xi has been clear about the direction of reform. He warned against copying other countries’ political systems, and once said that a reform that denies socialist orientation would lead to a “dead end. “
“What cannot be replaced will have to remain decidedly unreplaced,” he said.
To change, Xi demanded action from companies, urging them to create reform situations even when they don’t yet exist. The essential responsibilities were specifically to eliminate all the drawbacks that limit the energy of advertising entities and hinder the full functioning of the market.
Xi’s reforms, unprecedented in scope, scale and intensity, spanned economic, political, cultural, social, ecological and Party-building areas.
He has developed a methodology for reform in the new era: “properly handling the relationships between emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts, between advancing as a whole and making breakthroughs in key areas, between top-level design and crossing the river by feeling the stones, between being bold and maintaining a steady pace, as well as balancing reform, development, and stability.”
He has stressed pursuing reform in a systematic, holistic, and coordinated way and respecting the pioneering spirit of the people. Officials have also been told to “establish the new before abolishing the old” and ensure proper timing and intensity of reform to good effect.
“It has corrected the mentality of measuring the progression of good fortune only through GDP expansion and made it possible to reform the interests of some people,” said a Shaanxi official.
He recalled that Xi issued six orders to crack down on illegal villa structure through officials in collusion with corporations in the Qinling Mountains nature reserves. This was the local resistance he encountered at the time through ecological reform.
Xi has pushed for reforms in the face of adversity and has had to overcome the blockades of vested interests. “We want to have the courage to venture into the mountains knowing full well that there are tigers and continue to push for reforms,” he said. .
In the year Xi was general secretary, corruption similar to vote buying in the election of legislators or Party officials occurred in Liaoning, Hunan and Sichuan provinces.
“The corrupt have allowed corporations that paid bribes to illegally unload projects or manipulate the market,” said a local official, raising considerations about the business environment in the northeastern provinces of the Rust Belt.
Xi initiated an unprecedented anti-corruption “storm.” The fight against corruption is beneficial for purifying the “political ecosystem” as well as the “economic ecosystem,” and is conducive to straightening out the market order and restoring the market to what it should be, he said.
The “zero tolerance” anti-corruption crusade continues to rage. In 2023, it has made waves in industries, finance, grains, healthcare, semiconductors, and even sports.
Hundreds of high-ranking government officials, bank executives and hospital directors, figures such as the president of the Chinese Football Federation and the former coach of the men’s national soccer team, have been investigated or charged.
The revelations, particularly in the football sector, have been shocking: corruption may only be the end result of matches, undermining fair market-based competition.
Xi has focused on overhauling the “competition mechanism” through reforms. He advocated the desire to reform the Party, which has existed for more than a century, and called for “the ultimate total self-revolution. “
Under his leadership, a full and rigorous Party self-governance system was built, and a sound system of Party regulations has taken shape. He improved the inspection system and established the national supervision system, “confining power to an institutional cage.”
He also introduced an unprecedented reform of Party and state institutions to “resolve the primary and difficult disorders that are attracting wide attention. “
This reform further dismantled vested interests. Xi has called for the resolve to “offend a few thousand instead of failing the 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
He propelled the Party’s self-revolution to guide social change. The Party has taken the initiative to eliminate institutional deficiencies in social development to unlock productive forces, as explained by Liu Bingxiang, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.
In this regard, Xi has advocated fully advancing law-based governance, striving to solve the long-standing problems of power outweighing the law and personal relationships trumping legal principles.
He once railed against the phenomenon that “money can buy an exemption from punishment and even buy life. ” At times he said: “The socialist market economy is an economy based on credit and the rule of law. “
It has ordered the formulation and revision of a number of laws, adding the Antitrust Act, which provides the legal basis for the fair festival review system.
The legal formula for intellectual asset rights has also been improved. In a typical 2020 case, American basketball legend Michael Jordan won a lawsuit in Shanghai, in which a Chinese company was ordered to block “Qiao Dan,” the Chinese translation of Jordan, from being on its calls and trademarks of products.
Xi’s reforms, then, have not only led to economic transformation. He said that the essence of modernization lies in the modernization of other peoples. Fostering “cultural acceptance and national pride” among Chinese people has become a key goal of the reform.
In 2012, Xi incorporated “cultural acceptance as true with” in his report to the 18th National Congress of the CCP. He later incorporated this concept into the “Four Trusts” of socialism with Chinese characteristics, describing cultural acceptance as true with a “more fundamental. “, deeper and longer-lasting force. “
Xi’s reforms also signify a revision of Marxism to adapt it to the new era, integrating its fundamental principles with the expressed realities of China and its classical culture. As a result, China’s reforms took on a new philosophical significance.
In his 2017 New Year message, Xi said that “the main reform framework, which is like the ‘four beams and eight pillars’ of a space, has essentially been established in the fields. For those familiar with classical architecture China, this means that the space has taken shape and can be further refined.
Xi has directed reforms toward an overarching goal: upholding and improving the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and modernizing China’s system and capacity for governance.
This, undoubtedly, takes a long-term and challenging process to fulfill.
ONLY REFORMERS CAN ADVANCE, ONLY INNOVATORS CAN PROSPER
The year Xi took office, China’s annual economic expansion rate fell below 8% for the first time since 1999.
The debt crisis in Europe has severely hurt China’s foreign trade, and property regulations have weighed on domestic demand. An analyst at a foreign bank said that “China’s economy is facing its highest critical moment in just 30 years. “
Xi pointed out that China’s economy had entered a new development stage and proposed a new development philosophy featuring innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared growth. He initiated the supply-side structural reform, pushing the economy toward high-quality development and moving to construct a new development pattern.
Addressing officials on the significance of the reform to optimize the supply structure, Xi cited the story of Chinese tourists buying smart toilet seats and rice cookers abroad as an example. At that time, Chinese people were enthusiastic about purchasing a multitude of goods overseas, from luxury items to daily necessities. Meanwhile, a large number of domestic products were struggling to find buyers.
After years of supply-side structural reform under Xi’s watch, the quality and competitiveness of Chinese products have improved, many of which have earned international acclaim, spanning from lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic products to drones. Media have noticed that a growing number of young Chinese consumers are redirecting their interest from imported cosmetics to domestic products.
The reform also addressed the challenge of overcapacity in some sectors. By the end of 2022, the metal industry had eliminated obsolete and surplus capacity totaling around three hundred million tonnes, more than double India’s total crude metal production that year.
To push forward the supply-side structural reform, Xi is leading by example with foresight. A decade ago, most cars on China’s roads were foreign-brand gasoline vehicles. In 2014, during an inspection of SAIC Motor, a major Chinese carmaker, he emphasized the significance of developing products that cater to diverse needs and highlighted the importance of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in strengthening China’s position in the automotive sector.
In the following decade, Xi became a big fan of electric cars, visiting automotive companies, touring laboratories, and showing great interest in experiencing electric cars.
When he visited an NEV company in 2023, the country was already a world leader in NEV technology. Every third car exported through China included an electric passenger vehicle, and NEV production and sales in China accounted for two-thirds of the global total.
The new energy industry is truly a component of Xi’s vision of new quality productive forces. The word “new quality productive forces” has become a new buzzword after Xi talked about it in his recent inspection visits, although he started selling it much earlier.
In the 1970s, in Liangjiahe village, Xi took the initiative to introduce biogas production facilities in Shaanxi, allowing villagers to use biogas for lighting and cooking, replacing the classic way of burning wood. This first initiative can be seen as an example of the mobilization of new quality productive forces in this period.
In 2024, the progression of new quality productive forces was included for the first time in the government’s activity report. This is widely perceived as the popular belief that the style of economic expansion driven primarily through cheap labor, gigantic but inefficient investments, external demand and excessive resource consumption can no longer be sustained, and that China will have to actively domesticate new technologies. , new economic styles and the future. industries to the quality and efficiency of progress.
“This has given new hope and impetus to China to push forward its economic transformation,” said an article in the South China Morning Post.
Xi believes that in order to expand new productive forces, it is imperative to further deepen reforms to boost clinical and technological innovation.
He likened China’s lack of innovation capacity to the “Achilles’ heel” of an economic giant. The new productive forces align with Xi’s previous vision of an innovation-driven progression strategy.
“Only reformers can advance, only innovators can prosper, and only those who reform and innovate will prevail,” Xi said.
Under his leadership, a series of pro-innovation measures have been implemented to inspire companies to intensify research and development, apply the effects of clinical and technological studies in the real world, and improve the control of clinical projects. and primary technologies. He also insisted on the status quo of a new formula for mobilizing resources at the national level for key technological advances.
The effects are evident, with China’s ranking in the Global Innovation Index, published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, jumping from 34th in 2012 to 12th last year.
Data released in 2023 showed that in 2022, China overtook the U. S. The U. S. is the first country or territory to be ranked number one in contributions to study articles published in the Nature Index organization of herbal scientific journals.
Telecom giant Huawei successfully launched its new high-end smartphones last year, which demonstrated the limited effects of U.S. “extreme pressure” on Chinese high-tech firms.
However, there are still many paintings to be done. Xi warned that “the fundamental studies are those of clinical and technological innovation. Although China has made significant progress in fundamental studies, the distance between it and the foreign complex point is still evident.
He called for greater support for fundamental studies and original innovation, focusing on innovative and cutting-edge technologies.
UNLEASHING the power of the market
By the time Xi ascended to the Party’s most sensible post, it had been two decades since the concept of building a socialist market economy was introduced.
However, doing business remained a complicated task. In 2014, a lawmaker who attended “two local sessions” revealed that a single investment project, from land acquisition to the finishing touch of all administrative approval procedures, required more than 30 government approvals and more than a hundred stamps. The entire procedure took a minimum of 272 calendar days.
Xi firmly opposes heavy-handed government approvals. While working in Fuzhou, Fujian, he developed a mechanism to carry out all investment allocation approval procedures in a single building.
As the country’s ideal leader, he advocated for “the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation and for the government to play its role better. “
Over the years, the State Council has cancelled or delegated administrative approval authority for more than 1,000 pieces to the lower-level government and reduced the number of investment pieces subject to central government approval by more than 90 percent.
“Let the energy that creates wealth explode and let the force of the market be unleashed,” Xi said.
The effects of the reforms are remarkable, as China has been ranked by the World Bank as one of the 10 economies with the most notable improvement in the business environment for two consecutive years.
In January 2019, construction began on Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai and the automaker began delivering the first batch of factory-built Chinese-made Model 3 electric cars in December 2019, a progression speed praised by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Xi is well aware of the plight facing private enterprises. He mandated the status quo of a personal economy progress office, under the auspices of the country’s most sensible economic planner, to provide assistance to struggling private businesses.
Xi also wants to promote currency reforms to make it easier to finance personal businesses. It highlights the importance of fostering personal capital for inputs in industries and sectors where access is not explicitly prohibited through laws and regulations.
Under Xi’s instructions, the formula of a negative list for market access was fully implemented, allowing access to spaces not explicitly prohibited on the list. By the end of 2023, the number of nationally registered business entities reached 184 million, more than 3 times the 2012 figure.
From 2012 to 2023, the number of enterprises in China quadrupled, and the share of enterprises in the total number of enterprises increased from less than 80% to more than 92%.
During this period, personal banks were allowed to identify themselves, a controlled high-speed exercise through personal capital began operating, personal investments were allowed to enter the oil and fuel exploration and production sector, and a personal rocket corporation effectively introduced a rocket. of the sea.
While strengthening the Party’s leadership, Xi has announced market-oriented reforms for state-owned enterprises. In 2017, China Unicom, as the first state-owned enterprise in the centrally managed telecommunications sector to open up to personal capital, attracted 14 strategic investors. adding titans Tencent, Baidu, JD. com and Alibaba, as components of the “cross-ownership reform. “
A three-year action plan for the reform of state-owned enterprises transformed state-owned enterprises into limited liability corporations or corporations limited by shares. Some 38,000 public corporations have created a board of directors.
Foreign media have found that China’s reforms are proceeding at the speed of progression. The U. S. -led industrial war, the global pandemic, and rising geopolitical tensions have tested the resilience of the Chinese economy. The country is also their model of economic progression.
Xi has led China to push the structure of a new growth model, which takes the domestic market as a pillar while allowing domestic and foreign markets to connect with each other.
A key detail of this strategy is the creation of a unified national market. To achieve this, a series of reforms are being implemented to address local protectionism and dismantle regional barriers.
Xi has made “institutional opening” a priority. As a result of one such measure, China removed foreign ownership limits for securities firms, securities fund control companies, futures companies, and life insurance companies.
At the same time, it is wary of the disorderly expansion of capital, market manipulation, and the pursuit of exorbitant profits in certain areas. He said it was negative for the interests of the people.
He proposed “traffic lights” for capital flows, ensuring that “financial magnates” do not act unscrupulously while allowing capital to serve as well as an object of production.
This indicates that China’s reform is no longer solely focused on expansion, but rather considers a more balanced approach.
Under Xi’s leadership, China has well controlled the dangers related to shadow banking and finance. Efforts have been made to address debt dangers related to local governments and giant companies such as China Evergrande Group. These measures safeguarded the interests of others and ensured the proper functioning of the market.
MAKING PEOPLE’S PRIORITIES HIS OWN
Xi emphasizes that the ultimate goal of reform is for the people’s well-being. He has pledged to make people’s priorities his own and act on their wishes. This is different from the “capital first” stance.
He said that after more than 30 years of reform and opening-up, the main contradiction facing Chinese society has undergone significant changes. “What we face is the contradiction between unbalanced and insufficient progress and people’s growing desire for a better life. “Xi said in 2017.
In reaction to this change, he advocates coordinated and shared development, and is committed to learning about Deng’s vision of “common prosperity. “
When Xi ascended to the most sensible position in the Party, there were significant disparities between China’s eastern and western regions, and severe wealth inequality.
He advocated the strategy of alleviating poverty by implementing a “selective elimination of poverty. “In less than 10 years, China has eliminated absolute poverty in rural areas, a challenge that had persisted for thousands of years in the country.
In April 2012, just months before Xi took office, a tragic incident occurred in Beijing’s neighboring Hebei province, where a farmer cut his leg due to illness and considerations of unaffordable medical treatment. At the time, many poor farmers had little means to deal with serious diseases.
Xi has initiated reforms in the rural healthcare system to ensure that people in the vast rural areas have access to medical treatment. The campaigns have significantly reduced cases of illness-induced poverty. Almost all low-income people and individuals just lifted out of poverty in rural areas now have medical insurance.
China’s reforms began in rural spaces in the 1970s, and Xi’s reform projects related to agriculture, rural spaces, and farmers encompass a wider diversity of changes.
He established a forged mechanism for the production of solid grains so that “China’s food source remains firmly in its hands,” boosted the rural business environment, and promoted rural revitalization at all levels.
In the early 2000s, Xi proposed in an educational document ambitious reforms of the family registration formula to eliminate social and economic disparities, as well as the department of urban and rural hard labor markets generated through the formula.
At that time, there was great controversy over whether or not to abolish restrictions on family registration.
In 2016, the central government introduced a scheme to grant urban residency to some 100 million rural people and other permanent citizens without local family registration, which ended ahead of schedule.
During an inspection of Shanghai in 2023, Xi visited the apartments where migrant staff lived. He was glad to learn that immigrants were settling in the metropolis.
“Great! Stay, settle down, and strive for a better life,” he said.
Under Xi’s leadership, China has abandoned the formula of re-education work, which has been in place for more than half a century.
In reaction to demographic changes, China has adjusted its population and family circle and planned policies accordingly. Reforms have been carried out to ensure greater and more equitable education. In addition, Xi led the status quo of the world’s largest social security formula and initiated reforms in fundamental care services for the elderly.
Convinced that “people’s physical fitness is the main indicator of modernization,” Xi called for reading and selling the practice in Fujian’s Sanming city to meet the challenge of fitness care reform.
Xi called for the complete elimination of margins on medicines and medical consumables, which have been in place for more than 60 years, thus reducing health care costs for patients. Ministries responded to their call and formed a working group to negotiate the costs of medicines and consumables with pharmaceutical companies.
In a widely circulated online video of price negotiation in 2021, representatives from the National Healthcare Security Administration insisted that “no minority group of patients should be abandoned,” and managed to cut the price of a life-saving drug for a rare disease from about 700,000 yuan per shot to 33,000 yuan per shot after eight rounds of intense negotiations.
This drug was then included in China’s medical insurance catalog, igniting hope for over 30,000 patients nationwide. Similar price cuts for hundreds of drugs have cumulatively saved the public some 500 billion yuan in medical expenses.
Xi is fascinated by history and culture and frequents museums, having visited almost every single museum in Beijing during his childhood.
Over the past decade, China has significantly increased funding for cultural relics preservation, sparking a cultural and museum boom nationwide. There are over 3,300 public libraries and more than 10,000 cultural centers and museums nationwide. Tickets for museums are often in high demand, especially during holidays.
Xi’s reform of the cultural sector emphasizes enriching the people’s “spiritual world” as a condition for China’s modernization. This involves refining the plans and policies of the cultural industry and fostering a new bureaucracy of cultural enterprises and new models of cultural consumption.
As a result, the film industry has noticed an immediate progression in recent years. The number of movie theaters in the country has grown from around 13,000 in 2012 to more than 86,000 today, the number in the world.
Another revolutionary reform led by Xi occurred in the ecological field.
When Xi took office as general secretary in 2012, environmental pollutants were one of the public’s most common court cases. Earlier that year, a river in Guangxi’s Zhuang Autonomous Region reported cadmium contaminants, jeopardizing the protection of drinking water for more than a century. millions of people. Several high-profile “not in my backyard” incidents occurred across the country throughout the year.
Xi, known for his environmental projects in Xiamen to plug Yundang Lake and West Lake in Hangzhou, created the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, set ecological and environmental ions as an inviolable “red line” and conducted inspections on ecological and environmental ions. He called on local officials to be guilty of considering rivers, lakes and forests “bosses. “
Under Xi’s leadership, China has the country with the fastest improvement in air quality, the greatest accumulation of forest resources, and the largest afforestation dominance in the world. The country has also maintained a strong position as a world leader in installed capacity for hydropower, wind, solar and biomass power generation, as a component of its drive to revolutionize the force field.
China has also developed the world’s largest carbon market and has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality after peaking in a much shorter period of time than evolved countries. “Green and low-carbon progress is the order of the day, and those who stick to it will thrive,” he said.
Xi believes that protecting the environment and ecology is vital to sustaining the Chinese nation’s development and is also crucial for protecting the Earth, which is “our one and only home.”
FORGING AHEAD WITH COURAGE
“No other country around the world can comprehensively advance reform in the same way as present-day China does, with a commitment to its promises and a sense of urgency,” said a report by the Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao.
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2023, a survey conducted by consulting firm Edelman, the overall acceptance of China as true was 83, ranking first among all countries surveyed.
China is the country among respondents that shows explicit optimism about the economic outlook, according to the survey.
Observers say the socialist market economy heralded through Deng can endure because Xi himself is the helmsman of reforms in the new era.
Xi has ignited the engine that is propelling China onto an irreversible adventure toward modernization.
This is one of the most ambitious reforms in human history. In the early 1990s, Deng’s proclamation that “development is the absolute principle” liberated and evolved China’s productive social forces, thereby strengthening China’s overall national strength.
Xi believed that progression is the unwavering precept of the new era and initiated a comprehensive and systematic transformation in China, which has contributed to the rebalancing of the global economy.
He advocated for the construction of an innovative, revitalized, interconnected and inclusive economy, injecting new energy into development.
Last year, China’s economy grew by 5. 2 percent, contributing a third of global growth. The country’s economic engine remains strong. The “next China,” according to many analysts, remains China when it comes to investment destinations.
What reforms will China implement in the long term, and how?The factor is attracting the world’s attention.
Reforms aimed at selling new productive forces will lead to a new emancipation of minds. Zhao Zhenhua, director of the Economics Department of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said that fostering new quality production relations that adapt to new quality productive forces is indeed a profound Revolution involving elements such as property ownership. the means of production, distribution and the position of Americans in production.
This year’s “two sessions” sent a signal that China plans to identify “pilot reform zones to build a high-level socialist market economy. “The goal is to foster “a world-class, market-oriented, law-based, and internationalized economy. “”an environment” in which state-owned enterprises, personal enterprises, and foreign-invested corporations play a role in China’s modernization dynamics.
In addition, new reform measures will be adopted to foster new business growth engines, promote increased admission, expand middle-income organization, and ensure the equivalent of core services. These projects are expected to pave the way for huge business opportunities in a market. of more than 1. 4 billion people.
China is pushing for accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Commerce said China is willing to frequently deepen reforms, try to meet the main criteria required by the agreement, and make high-level opening-up commitments beyond its existing practices in the area of market access.
There are reasons to be optimistic about the prospects of reforms under the leadership of Xi.
This optimism is not only based on China’s enormous economic and market size but also the unified leadership of the Party with Xi at the core. The CPC has the guts for self-reform and is capable of turning blueprints into concrete actions.
Furthermore, China is still a developing country with substantial growth space and potential.
Some Western observers understand China’s developing economic strength as a risk and China’s vast market as a “tool of economic coercion,” fueling attempts to decouple or impose a blockade with China. These perspectives want to change.
China’s reforms are aimed at converting or challenging the global order. Instead, the country actively participates in and affects global economic governance, advocating for equity and justice on the global stage.
Xi has inherited and carried forward Deng’s legacy through comprehensively deepening reform. This not only created economic miracles but also displayed the charm of the Chinese culture, contributing to the creation of a new form of human civilization.
“Our modernization is the most complicated and the most important thing,” Xi said. “This is an unprecedented path, but we will continue to explore it and move forward boldly. “