China’s National People’s Congress speech parsed for nuggets of useful information
The Chinese National People’s Congress (NPC) happened this week. Every year, the photos of ranks of Party officials sat in the Great Hall of the People remind me of my school’s prize giving day, when the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall would be hired and we, in uniform on a Saturday, would have to listen to interminable speeches from the masters, unlistenable music from the school orchestra, and snoring from the parents in the seats at the back. The event often took place on FA Cup Final Saturday as well, so the sound of tinny transistor radios would filter to the front from some of the parents’ enclosures, along with an occasional muffled roar as a goal was scored or missed. Are Chinese party officials as attentive during the NPC? And was anything substantive announced that they or we missed?
One of the main events took place on Tuesday when Premier Li Qiang gave his Work Report at the start of the NPC. This is like the UK budget and the US State of the Union address rolled into one, indicating policy priorities and spending announcements for the year to come. Translations vary slightly but the gist was that the government will focus on efforts to remove development bottlenecks in the economy, especially around finance, productivity and technology.
Premier Li told the gathered thousands of representatives: “First, striving to modernise industrial systems and develop new, quality productive forces at a faster pace, we should study new faster growth drivers and strengths and promote a new leap forwards in productive forces.”
He added some detail to this bingo sheet of keywords, namely:
· Work to upgrade industrial supply chains (i.e., productivity improvement measures)
· Promote development of traditional businesses (I think he means heavy industry here)
· Carry out technological transformation (invest in IT and AI)
· Upgrading in the manufacturing sector (invest in automation).
Read more here.
