China’s top decision-making body, the Communist Party’s Politburo, called for a systematic response to external shocks and challenges and for stronger energy and resource security, Chinese state media reported. The message comes as uncertainty has risen in areas including energy and trade following the outbreak of the Iran war.
According to Xinhua News Agency and other state outlets, the Politburo met on the 28th under the chairmanship of Chinese President Xi Jinping to review and assess the current economic situation and related work.
The Politburo includes officials ranked within the party’s top 24 and typically meets once a month. Meetings held in April, July, October and December are regarded as key sessions for reviewing quarterly political and economic trends.
The meeting said China’s economy “started strongly” this year, with major indicators exceeding expectations and showing “strong resilience and vitality,” praising first-quarter performance. It also said “some difficulties and challenges still exist,” and called for further consolidating the trend of improvement while maintaining stability.
The Politburo urged adherence to the guiding approach of pursuing progress while maintaining stability, and called for building a new development pattern. It said China should advance technological self-reliance and strengthen independent control of industrial supply chains, while carrying out a more proactive fiscal policy and a suitably accommodative monetary policy with precision.
On fiscal policy, it called for continued improvements in the structure of spending and for firmly safeguarding the minimum baseline of the so-called “three guarantees” at the grassroots level: basic livelihoods, wages and government operations. On monetary policy, it called for greater proactiveness, flexibility and precision to keep market liquidity at an adequate level.
Boosting domestic demand was reaffirmed as a core task for the year. The meeting called for expanding the supply of high-quality goods and services, promoting consumption upgrades, and expanding and improving the service sector. It also listed expanded planning and construction of networks including water resources, new power grids, computing power, next-generation communications, urban water supply and drainage, logistics and other systems.
The meeting also urged faster development of a modern industrial system, maintaining a reasonable share of manufacturing, building a unified national market, and addressing cutthroat low-price competition.
It called for fully advancing an “AI plus” initiative to expand the integration of artificial intelligence with industry, develop a smart economy, improve AI governance, and deepen reforms of state assets and state-owned enterprises.
With geopolitical risks rising, including the outbreak of the Iran war, the meeting also warned of possible deterioration in the external environment. It said China should “systematically respond to external shocks and challenges” and raise energy and resource security to address uncertainties through high-quality development.
The Politburo also raised the need for measures to defuse risks in key areas including the property market, local government debt and small and medium-sized financial institutions. It called for strengthening an employment-first policy, improving management of agricultural production, and stabilizing prices for farm and livestock products including pork.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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