Beijing: China on Sunday pegged its growth target for 2023 at “around 5%” as the pandemic-hit economy looks to bounce back from three years of Covid-19 restrictions, which put millions under frequent lockdowns, slowed consumption and pushed down the country’s growth to 3%, its slowest in decades, last year.
Outgoing Premier Li Keqiang announced the target in a speech to open the annual session of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), saying: “We should give priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption.”
“China’s economy is staging a steady recovery and demonstrating vast potential and momentum for further growth,” Li said in his address as he delivered the government work report to nearly 3,000 delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Over 12 million jobs were added in 2022, the work report said, adding that the urban unemployment rate fell to 5.5%.
President Xi Jinping, who is set for a third presidential term, attended the session along with China’s top leadership.
Li will finish his decade as the country’s premier, who was in charge of the economy, at the end of the eight-day NPC.
China’s GDP rate for 2023 has been under sharp focus as the country emerges from the draconian “zero-Covid” measures, which were lifted in December.
China’s annual growth target is closely watched and scrutinised given that the ruling and authoritarian Communist Party of China’s (CPC) legitimacy, observers say, is based on delivering steady economic growth and social stability.
Defence budget
China also unveiled its annual military budget for 2023, which will increase by 7.2% to roughly 1.55 trillion yuan ($224 billion), an allocation closely tracked globally as well as by neighbours including India as a measure of Beijing’s expanding military ambition.
It is for the third time that China’s official defence outlay has crossed the $200 billion mark, the first being in 2021, amid rising geo-political tensions and China’s increasing military belligerence over Taiwan and in the South China Sea region.
Analysts told Chinese state media that the defence budget “marks a reasonable and restrained boost amid military spending sprees by many other countries around the world in light of global security tensions”.
“The armed forces should intensify military training and preparedness across the board, develop new military strategic guidance, devote greater energy to training under combat conditions and make well-coordinated efforts to strengthen military work in all directions and domains,” the work report said.
Experts say China’s defence budget is much higher than what is officially unveiled: The country already has the largest standing army and navy in the world.
Reading out the work report, Premier Li said China should remain “committed to an independent foreign policy of peace” without mentioning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which China is yet to condemn.
On Taiwan, a self-governed democracy Beijing claims is part of its territory, the work report reiterated Beijing’s stand against the island’s “independence”.
The work report called for “resolute steps to oppose ‘Taiwan independence’” while sticking to Beijing’s call for “peaceful reunification.”
“China succeeded in maintaining overall stable economic performance while overcoming great difficulties and challenges, and was able to generally accomplish the main targets and tasks for the year amid a complex and fluid environment,” the report noted, saying that “such achievements are a testament to the tremendous resilience of China’s economy.”
“The report reviewed the government work last year in a host of areas, including efforts to effectively coordinate Covid-19 response with economic and social development, and decisive and timely macro regulation to tackle new downward pressure on the economy,” official news agency, Xinhua, said in a report.
