China 20th National Party Congress Sets Out Crucial Economic Agenda
(17 October 2022 – China) Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to win a third five-year term as General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party at the 20th Party Congress, breaking with the two-term limit of recent precedent at a crucial time as the economy faces severe headwinds.
The week long meeting of 2,300 party leaders is held every five years at the Great Hall of the People on Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Proceedings are largely held behind closed doors and will concentrate on the country’s alarming slow down in economic growth on the back of the overleveraged property market accounting for 25 percent of the country’s economic output in the last decade, sagging foreign investment, crippling COVID lockdowns and mass quarantines that have dented retail demand and business confidence.
Rising tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have resulted in major global corporates recalibrating their supply chains to new trade corridors as outlined in East & Partners latest Global Insight Report Digitising and Greening Global Supply Chains.
China’s economy, which was just 0.4 percent larger from in Q2 2022 year-on-year, displays growth significantly below the government’s initial target for 5.5 percent in 2022. For the first time in three decades, China’s economic growth is expected to fall below Asia’s average.
“We will focus on national strategic needs, gather strength to carry out indigenous and leading scientific and technological research, and resolutely win the battle in key core technologies” Xi said in a speech at the opening of the ruling Communist Party’s congress in Beijing.
“We will speed up innovation in areas that are vital to technology self-reliance and move faster to launch a number of major national projects that are of strategic, big-picture and long-term importance”
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