Mar 05, 2021, 13:32
As national lawmakers and political advisors are gathering for the "two sessions," the world is keeping a close eye on how China's annual political event will guide and influence the country's development for the years ahead.
This year's gathering, which has returned to the regular March schedule after last year's postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, takes on special importance. China, a country with a population of 1.4 billion, has just declared a complete victory in eradicating absolute poverty, and will embark on a new journey with the next five-year plan.
During the "two sessions," lawmakers will discuss the economic and social development plan for the 2021-2025 period as well as the long-range objectives through the year 2035. The blueprint that will guide China's development has attracted much global attention.
In the coming years, China will move faster to pursue a new development pattern featuring "dual circulation," where the internal and external markets can reinforce each other, with the domestic market as the mainstay.
In this process, the world community expects China can give full play to the advantage of its super-large market and continue to expand it by boosting domestic consumption. Beijing's firm commitment to greater opening-up means more dynamics and benefits for the global economic recovery and sustainable growth.
The world economy is struggling with a deep recession under the shadow of the pandemic. As the virus is still spreading, the road to recovery will be long and highly uncertain.
China has largely brought the pandemic under control and became the only major economy with positive growth last year, and that will give more certainties and possibilities to the world in this stormy moment.
Global investors have cast their votes of confidence in the Chinese market. According to the United Nations (UN) Investment Trends Monitor report in January, global foreign direct investment in 2020 has slumped by 42 percent from 1.5 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019, while China saw a 4-percent increase in this field in the same year.
"The most attractive market among global markets is China's domestic market," said Kiyoyuki Seguchi, research director at Japan's Canon Institute for Global Studies. "This is a consensus not only among Japanese companies, but also among world-class companies."
As the global fight against poverty has also been beset by the pandemic, many countries are looking to draw inspirations from China in this regard, and to learn more about China's plan for the next stage of development through the "two sessions."
Poverty has long been a hard nut to crack for the world, and the pandemic makes the problem all the more difficult to solve. According to the latest UN World Economic Situation and Prospects, job and income losses have pushed an estimated 131 million more people into poverty in 2020.
China, however, did not give up on delivering its promise to end absolute poverty in the country in the face of the pandemic. Last year, all of the country's nearly 100 million impoverished rural residents living below the current poverty line cast off poverty after eight years' efforts, achieving the UN poverty reduction goal a decade in advance.
By doing so, China has blazed a poverty reduction path and formed an anti-poverty theory with Chinese characteristics. It has also set an example for many other developing countries facing similar challenges.
In the next five years, China will continue to promote multilateralism and build an open world economy with its global partners so as to boost common development.
Last year, China signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership free trade deal with 14 other countries, and concluded negotiations for an investment agreement with the European Union. Those achievements were truly hard-won against the backdrop of a raging outbreak and rising tide of isolationism and protectionism.
The "two sessions" will show the world China's continued commitment to greater openness and closer cooperation on the world stage. China has been a valuable partner, Serbian legislator Zarko Obradovic said, noting that China has shared development achievements through the Belt and Road Initiative and others.
The global community has been overshadowed by a prolonged pandemic and slow recovery for quite some time. It is hoped that those around the world who are searching for ways to get back on their feet can find in China confidence, new impetus and inspirations, and press forward.
Weakened economy-wise, the US is resorting to using its geopolitical network in an attempt to demonize and contain China multilaterally.
In its eagerness to make China look bad, it has resorted to gaslighting or psychological projection, namely accusing another of doing what only one has been doing and that by telling lie after lie in order to create the myth of a threat which however is but only a silhouette of one's own shadow.
Strengthening economy-wise day by day, China must geopolitically counteract the US intentions which so far has only mosaic'ed the world into hegemon-centric US, pro-Global progress, and mercantilist fencesitters playing both sides. In a world never in greater need for total cooperation, this is a bad way to solve the problems which have beset all.
The two sessions will show that China planners are reading the world situation precisely. Undoubtedly there will always be challenges but if 'truths are upheld and errors rectified' by a continuing scientific approach, problems can be overcome while justified by sharper cost-benefit analysis even if 'dogs may still bark when the caravan has already moved on'.
Just as China's first modern rise was based on a stepwise ascent to greater openness and wider cooperation, her second rise today can be structured on the same platform, this time for having taken all the lessons in the last four decades. With confidence and responsibility must this time come with greater caution and reflection.
Moreover, as others would also be intimating, opening up without regulatory controls in place to protect consumers can lead to bigger problems such as monopolies, scams and corruptions. A strong central government with wise oversight and active judiciary institutions must therefore form the bulwark going forward.
Secondly, China is correct to focus on technology independence. As the European nations have amply seen for themselves, she has suffered enough from the barbaric atavism of a US bent only to crimp her technology achievements for the world while blocking their participation in her market crowbarred by US companies.
Indeed, chip autonomy is the key whether it be for consumer appliances, industrial and telecommunications systems, high-precision fabrication, or making the tools to design advanced materials including pharmaceuticals, or even as analytic engines for idea generation and multi-modal distribution.
And since China has commanded chip and circuit design software, it will only require one more step of making the progress from DUV to EUV equipment fabrication, where one is just a version progress step from the other, in order to finally reach the 3nm packing plateau.
Thirdly, modernization of her institutions will provide her inventors and entrepreneurs with intellectual property and technical standards protection and in doing so, marry her opening up to attract investors with stronger assurances that their joint-ventures with her innovators will mean the IP of the joint-ventures will be protected not just in China but also in the world market.
Fourthly, her first opening up has mushroomed across her land the world's most modern infrastructure. Her second opening up can see her creating a new infrastructure backboned on the use of information technologies including electro-mechanical devices and structural recognition tools that will usher a new era of total automation by which everyone can experience and tap for higher personal productivity and safety.
Fifthly, this new infrastructure can be acceleratively supported by the proposal to increase urbanization while alternative-energy rural automation can be simultaneously ramped up for national food security, further reductions of income gaps, and modernization of the western provinces as BRI gateways to the rest of the developing world.
Sixth, China remains at the forefront of market expansion and delivery. With more focus on IT, hybrid infrastructure, e-finance and rapid urbanisation, she has created the most fertile ground for smart logistics. As has been noted, her scale, digitisation, manufacturing and retail have been connected in data-driven and real-time loops.
With IoT and AI realized through 5-6G's, a future can be envisioned in which virtual reality becomes the 3D printing templates for rapid innovation and mass customization.
This world will have an unprecedentedly enormous potential to transform how people live and work everywhere and at any level of their existing development. Her technologies can help improve lives and livelihood, and lift people everywhere up from their wells of despair to realize their fullest potential and make this world a much better place.
Seventh and eighth, you already know.....
Meanwhile, the economic hitman of the world is still going around. He tries to sell his dollar but it has become jaded; he tries to sell his wares but he has imposed so much tariffs on the imports of parts to make them, his manufacturers cannot sell below the raised costs to them.
Unperturbed, he pulls out his last, crinkled, and expired, catalogue - he sells his brand of democracy of human rights.
Jauntily, he demands you buy them because of their feel-good nature.
That is, until, as a beguiled potential customer, you nonchalantly ask him some innocent questions, which are:
" If you are trying to sell us your brand of democracy of human rights, why is it that your US has secured 3 times more of the dosage of Covid-19 vaccines that your population really needs, while your poodles the UK is 5 times more and your Canada is 9 times more?
Why can't you secure just enough for your own and leave the excess that you don't need for the poor of the world who will be dying very soon but for the vaccine aid provided by China and Russia, even India?
If Czechoslovakia can now realize its error towards China which has also helped heroic Hungary, the African Continent, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates, where have you been all this while as a so-called "leader of the free world" and WHO returnee?
Therefore, if what you are selling are human rights, don't the rest of the world have rights to remain as living and healthier humans?
After all, dead humans can't buy any of your rights, can they?
The last we checked, you were only selling some snakeoil tonic called Hypocrisy."
Yes, a lot remains to be seen but the big picture is clear -- China is on its way to strengthen the gains in its anti-poverty campaign, and the opportunity occasioned by the Two Sessions offers the best window from which to view how the government intends to fulfill its commitment to a speedier economic recovery.
The Two Circulations is the main concept here and our Japanese neighbors are the ones who have the acumen and sensitivity to understand that the Inner Circulation is the one that matters most because of the huge demand for consumer goods generated by the hermit-like existence of a pandemic-stricken world.
I have no doubt it will be a great success and a happy occasion for this year.
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