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Chinese Premier Li Qiang attends a meeting with the Director General of the World Trade Organization ahead of the World Economic Forum New Champions meeting in Tianjin, China, on June 26, 2023.
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BEIJING — Chinese Premier Li Qiang said on Tuesday that his country is still on track to meet its annual growth target of about 5%.
He said growth in the second quarter was expected to be faster than in the first.
The Chinese economy grew by 4.5% in the first quarter, better than expected. However, later data indicated slower growth. Economic data for May fell short of analysts’ expectations.
“From what we’re seeing this year, China’s economy is showing clear momentum of recovery and improvement,” Li said via a live stream of an official English translation.
Li spoke at the opening plenary session of the annual meeting of the new champions of the World Economic Forum.
The conference will take place from Tuesday to Thursday in Tianjin, China. This year’s meeting marks the first time since the pandemic that the World Economic Forum’s annual China conference will be held in person.
Li became prime minister in March, following a two-decade leadership reshuffle in October that saw the core squad packed with loyalists of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
China announced its growth target of about 5% for the year in March. At the time, Li told reporters that China’s economy is picking up and that some international organizations had raised their full-year growth forecasts.
On Tuesday, the Chinese premier repeated the line about predicted upgrades, again without mentioning specific settings or dates.
Economists’ forecasts for China’s gross domestic product this year have fluctuated.
Several investment banks – including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, UBS and Bank of America – have revised their full-year GDP forecasts in recent weeks. Earlier this year, many companies had raised their growth expectations for 2023.
In June, the World Bank raised its forecast for China’s growth this year to 5.6%, up from 4.3% previously.
The International Monetary Fund raised its forecast for China’s GDP to 5.2% in April, up from 4.4% previously.
About de-risking and safety
Li also stressed on Tuesday the need for global cooperation on trade and economic growth.
“As you know, some in the West are into the so-called phraseologies of reducing dependency and reducing risk,” he said. “These two concepts, I would say, are false propositions.”
“Since economic globalization has already made the world economy an integral whole in which everyone’s interests are closely intertwined, countries are interdependent, interrelated, on their economies,” Li said. “We can enable each other’s success.”
China is an important, if not the most important trading partner of many countries in the world.
During his speech on Tuesday, Li stressed “security” as crucial in the context of the need to “nourish peace and stability”.
“In China’s official jargon, we compare security to the number one and other things, the many zeros that come after it,” he said.
“In the American sense, without the number one, all the zeros that follow it would amount to nothing,” Li said via the official English translation.
Beijing has increasingly emphasized the need to ensure national security. The US has also mentioned the term in recent actions, such as restricting China’s access to high-end semiconductors.
Earlier this year, Liu He, then deputy prime minister, spoke at the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland.
In that speech, Liu said that “high-quality economic development should always be (China’s) goal”, and that the country would focus more on attracting foreign investment.
– CNBC’s Jihye Lee contributed to this report.
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