Translation Category: Economics
This special action plan issued by the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council outlines 30 actions to boost domestic consumption. These proposals aim to spur and improve the quality of consumption capacity, service consumption, and more to enhance the contributions of domestic consumption to China’s overall economy. The plan prioritizes increasing consumer spending power through pay adjustments and direct employment support while also addressing constraints on consumption. It also calls for leveraging fiscal policy support to supplement public services and expand disposable income, increasing consumption efficiency, and promoting new industries, consumption models and income channels.
Days after Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs announcement, Guan Tao, the global chief economist at BOCI China, assesses the impacts of the intensifying U.S.-China trade war. He compares this round of tariffs with the earlier tariffs imposed during Trump’s first term, concluding that their impacts on China this year may be similar to those of 2019. However, Guan views the external environment as increasingly suppressive and unpredictable, arguing that it will force China to “focus on doing its own things well” and spur domestic reforms spanning its development pattern, trade model, and macroeconomic policy priorities. Guan expects U.S.-China economic and trade relations to worsen but is confident these domestic adjustments will enable China to weather the “tariff storm.”
Three Chinese state-affiliated researchers Jiang Zhao, Dong Chao, and Fu Jiang assess the impact of Trump 2.0 on the global economy and U.S.-China trade relations. They foresee Trump’s policies as harmful to multilateral economic cooperation, but they believe the impact on China will be limited. They also propose a slate of countermeasures for Beijing, which include further diversifying export markets and trade cooperation with emerging economies, optimizing China’s ability to attract foreign investment, accelerating RMB internationalization, and “telling China’s economic development story well” to influence global public opinion.
Yang Guoliang, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing, frames U.S. pursuit of strategic competition with China as a reemergence of Western imperialism. He suggests the relative shift in economic power away from the West in past decades, toward the rest of the world, has led Washington to characterize globalization as “out-of-control” and introduce its own set of restrictions on international commercial engagement. While reiterating the need for continued reform and opening up, he underscores the need for China to set its own limits on commercial openness — particularly in the realm of inbound foreign investment from the West — in order to safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, a top economist at the Bank of China Securities unpacks the potential trade impacts of a second Trump administration on China. He argues that Trump 2.0 may not be universally unfavorable from Beijing’s perspective, given he is entering his second term more focused on domestic issues and China currently maintains a lower trade deficit with the United States than other countries. Though he suggests Trump 2.0 could be less volatile than Trump 1.0, Guan cautions that Beijing still needs to prepare for U.S.-China trade relations to worsen and views domestic reforms and economic performance improvements as key to strengthening China’s position.
Three Chinese economists from JD.com lay out potential impacts of tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to impose on China, arguing that U.S. domestic concerns will most likely reduce the duration and magnitude of such measures, thereby minimizing their impacts on the Chinese economy. They argue that regardless of the scale of Trump’s trade actions, Beijing should seek to bolster its national strength through proactive international trade integration with other countries.
Chinese researchers Sun Xuguang and Zhu Caihua explore the new paradigms of China’s trade as it responds to its industrial upgrading and domestic circumstances. They argue that as China seeks to become a manufacturing superpower, it has come to compete directly with developed countries in advanced manufacturing fields, engendering trade frictions with them. In the case of the United States and Europe, China’s changing trade patterns that now prioritize integrating domestic technology have in the authors’ view threatened to break up the Western high-tech monopoly and inevitably faced pushback.
In this January 2024 interview, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong outlines China’s strategy for “new industrialization.” Jin emphasizes the importance of upgrading advanced manufacturing through integration of cutting-edge technologies, consolidating China’s leadership in emerging strategic sectors in which it has an advantage, and supporting small firms that might be benefited by application of AI and other technologies in their production methods.
This lengthy piece outlines the underlying logic behind China’s new industrial upgrading policy, dubbed “new industrialization.” Jin Zhuanglong, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, lays out what he sees as key accomplishments and challenges for China’s industrial system going forward. Jin details steps Beijing will undertake to advance the manufacturing sector, emphasizing the need to better integrate and synergize technology innovation, digitalization, and industrial upgrading.
Guo Kai, the executive president of CF40, a think tank focusing on finance and economic issues, argues that the problem of overcapacity is being used in the U.S. to drive election politics, rather than being viewed purely as an economic concern. Domestically, he attributes overcapacity as a negative externality to China’s rapid manufacturing growth, and makes several policy recommendations to address the issue.