Li Qiang said China welcomes investment and private enterprise despite the crackdowns.
China’s new premier has insisted the country is open for business despite crackdowns on private business, even as Chinese leader Xi Jinping doubles down on security as a “fundamental development”.
Speaking on the last day of a key gathering of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, Li Qiang said China welcomes investment and will continue to improve its business climate, including the protection of property rights. company and the interests of entrepreneurs.
“Economic development is the fundamental solution to creating jobs,” Li said Monday during a televised press conference to mark the closing of the National People’s Congress.
“Private entrepreneurs or businesses can enjoy a better environment and a wider space for development,” Li added.
As No. 2 Chinese official, Li, a former Communist chief in Shanghai, is tasked with reviving the world’s second-largest economy after ending a tough “zero-COVID” policy of lockdowns, mass testing and quarantine.
Li, who was officially named as premier on Saturday, said meeting China’s economic growth target of 5 percent by 2023 would be “not an easy task” and would require officials to “double our efforts”.
But Li said the public is also not focusing primarily on the country’s economic indicators, but “specific issues” such as employment, income, education, housing, and health care.
China’s outgoing Premier Li Keqiang last week unveiled the country’s lowest growth target in decades as Beijing faces major economic challenges, including a low birth rate, high tensions with the United States and no security due to regulatory crackdowns on private industries from technology to education and real estate.
Li made his remarks as Xi, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, reiterated the priority of national security and called for the military to develop into a “Great Wall of steel”.
Alfred Muluan, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said Li’s words did little to reassure investors that China was deviating from a growing emphasis on -our security and nationalism.
“China’s domestic economy is definitely not doing well because COVID has hit China’s economy very hard. I don’t think they will recover soon, even though Li is very optimistic about China’s economic outlook,” Wu told Al Jazeera.
“I don’t think he really reassured people that China will return to the pro-business environment it used to be.”
Li, who is seen as one of Xi’s closest confidantes, has also been targeted by the US for its “siege and suppression” of China.
“China and the United States should work together, and must work together. If China and the US work together, we can do a lot,” Li said.
