China’s legislative body, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the advisory Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) began their annual full sessions on Tuesday, both focusing on policies to improve the nation’s economy.
The annual “two sessions” began with the opening of the CPPCC — which cannot pass laws but offers advice to the Communist Party leadership — on Tuesday, preceded by a press conference in which the Chinese government endeavored to set the tone for the event. The NPC will convene on Wednesday.
As he did last year, CPPCC spokesman Liu Jieyi insisted that China’s economy had “strong resilience” and was worth investing in, contradicting months of reports that China’s foreign investment is plummeting, growth is stagnant, and a worsening birth rate collapse bodes ill for the long term. Unlike last year, Liu assumed the role of economic optimist in the face of tariff threats from President Donald Trump, who imposed a ten-percent tariff on China this year and announced a second ten-percent increase expected to come into effect on Tuesday.
Unlike free societies, lawmaking in China is controlled by the Communist Party through the NPC, which is tasked with implementing the demands of genocidal dictator Xi Jinping. The NPC consists of nearly 3,000 members who only meet once a year, typically in March. The CPPCC, as it has no concrete political power, is often used to gift seats to famous regime-friendly Chinese people, such as communist movie star Jackie Chan, or to influential organized crime bosses. There are about 2,000 members in the CPPCC.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency identified determining China’s annual economic growth target as the primary objective of this year’s two sessions.
“Alongside the GDP target, the government work report is expected to outline other key economic indicators, including the deficit-to-GDP ratio and inflation target,” Xinhua detailed. “A plan for national economic and social development of the year, as well as the government budgets, will also be reviewed.”
Liu, the CPPCC spokesman, similarly named fortifying China’s beleaguered economy, which never completely recovered from the brutal mass house arrest policies during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, as a top issue. Liu belied some concern for the future by describing the world as “undergoing profound and complex changes” and China in particular facing “difficulties and challenges.”
“It is important to recognize that China’s economic fundamentals remain stable, with many advantages, strong resilience, and great potential,” Liu asserted, according to the state-run Global Times propaganda newspaper.
“Commenting on China’s economic prospects, Liu told a packed audience that the conditions supporting long-term positive growth and the fundamental trend of the Chinese economy remain unchanged,” the Times added.
The language was almost identical to how Liu discussed Beijing’s economic woes during the same press conference a year ago: “Looking to the future, the Chinese economy is resilient, has huge potential and vitality and its growth momentum will continue to strengthen and lead to a bright future.”
The period immediately preceding the 2024 “two sessions” featured the collapse of Chinese real estate giant Evergrande. In January of that year, a court in Hong Kong ordered the company to liquidate as a result of its massive $300 billion debt. The Chinese real estate sector has been especially weak following the pandemic lockdowns, resulting in Chinese citizens being forced to pay mortgages on homes that never existed and leading to massive protests and bank runs even before the fall of Evergrande.
China is currently facing a massive decline in foreign investment and a growing trend of foreign companies vacating their offices in the country. The South China Morning Post reported last week that Beijing and Shanghai have experienced an exodus of Western companies, leaving about 20 percent of office space vacant in both cities as of the end of 2024.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) launched an “action plan” to “stabilize foreign investment” in late February to address the problem that the NPC is expected to reinforce with policies enacted during the upcoming session.
The scale of economic issues facing the communist country has not fazed its top propagandists, who proclaimed in China Daily this week that the “two sessions” were a “a powerful testament to the nation’s resilience, innovation and cultural vitality” and a show of leadership over the United States. The newspaper contrasted the “two sessions,” which have received minimal press in the West, with the fraught encounter between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last week, calling it a “dramatic scene” but otherwise failing to explain how the two events are in any way comparable.
“Against a backdrop of geopolitical fragmentation and economic volatility, China is poised to deliver a message of confidence and unity,” China Daily claimed, omitting from its analysis China’s own internal economic volatility.
Both the two sessions are expected to be concluded by March 11, an unofficial date that foreign observers have surmised from the fact that traffic controls in the nation’s capital to limit outsiders from moving freely are scheduled to end then.
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