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Xi Targets China’s ‘Unbalanced’ Growth Over Next Five Years

The Chinese President is expected to secure an unprecedented third term as leader at the Communist Party Congress later this year


China's President Xi Jinping
China's President Xi Jinping delivers a speech following a swearing-in ceremony to inaugurate the city's new leader and government, on the 25th anniversary of the former British colony's handover to Chinese rule, in Hong Kong, China July 1, 2022. Photo: Reuters

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has reaffirmed his commitment to addressing “unbalanced and inadequate development” in the world’s No2 economy over the next five years.

State broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday said Xi made the comments in a special two-day meeting in Beijing on Tuesday, in which he laid out his vision for “the next five years and more,” after the ruling Communist Party holds a Congress later this year.

The party is due to reshuffle its leadership for the next five years at the Congress. While his previous two predecessors stepped down after two full terms, Xi is expected to secure an unprecedented third term as China’s top leader at the Congress.

 

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Xi had first mentioned the need to address problems of “unbalanced and inadequate development” as a policy priority when he presented a major political document at the last Congress in 2017.

The problems include low quality growth, weak innovation, a wide gap in development and social services available between cities and villages and an over-reliance on fossil fuels, he said in the Congress report in 2017.

Xi told regional chiefs and ministers gathered for this week’s meeting that the party must keep up its “fighting spirit” and strengthen its “ability to fight,” according to CCTV.

In his review of the past five years, Xi listed the modernisation of Chinese military and peace in the Taiwan Strait as some of his achievements.

 

  • Reuters with additional editing by Sean O’Meara

 

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Sean O'Meara

Sean O'Meara is an Editor at Asia Financial. He has been a newspaper man for more than 30 years, working at local, regional and national titles in the UK as a writer, sub-editor, page designer and print editor. A football, cricket and rugby fan, he has a particular interest in sports finance.