Economic Revival Complicated By Global Competition: President Xi Jinping

Efforts to revive China’s economy have become “complicated” due to increased global competition for investment, according to President Xi Jinping, who has called for measures to prevent and defuse significant economic and financial risks, such as those posed by the property sector and piling local government debt.

Xi stated in an official media article titled “State of the Country’s Economy” that more efforts should be made to attract and utilize foreign investment.

Xi said that economic work in 2023 is complicated and that efforts to revive it should focus on the major problems and begin with improving public expectations and boosting confidence in development, a tacit admission of the world’s second-largest economy’s dismal state, which shrank to 3% last year, the second lowest growth rate in 50 years.

Xi, also the general secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China, noted in an article originally written in Chinese and published in an official magazine that international competition for attracting investment is becoming more intense.

Due to three years of zero Covid policy and the government crackdown on big tech industries, China, long regarded as the world’s factory, has seen an increasing shift of international investments to several countries, including India, in recent years.

China’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) totaled USD 17.94 trillion in 2022, falling short of the official target of 5.5 percent.