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Social security provision He welcomed the proposals to significantly increase social security
provision, which he believed would reduce the reliance on "fear-driven
"precautionary saving. " (This is) taking dead aim on a key impediment to an increased share of personal consumption," he said. George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University's China
Centre, said, however, that China was being driven to prioritize
domestic production and consumption by a more difficult international
environment and by attempts to decouple it from global supply chains in
technology and other areas. "China wants to become less dependent on the US and other Western suppliers," he said. Zhu Ning, an expert on China's financial system and professor of
finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Shanghai Advanced Institute
of Finance, insisted the emphasis on the quality rather than quantity of
growth was now the right way forward. There was no indication of
specific GDP targets in the proposals, which appeared to be a departure
from the past. "This is a welcome development. If there are targets for GDP they
will probably be set within a range, rather than be specific," he said. "Putting in place goals to be achieved over 15 years instead of five
also gets people to think qualitatively rather than quantitatively." For China to meet its developmental targets, further reform of the nation's governance system is seen as vital. Ma Liang, a professor of public policy at Renmin University of
China's National Academy of Development and Strategy in Beijing, said
the Fifth Plenary Session was right to emphasize good governance and
improving government capacity. "Government reform and innovation is vital to achieve economic and
social development. It will also boost public confidence in government
capacity," he said. Parag Khanna, a global strategist and author, said one of the issues
if China does achieve its development goals is whether the world is
actually big enough for a more highly developed China. "The question is not one of China's capacity to supply itself and the
world with essential and high-tech goods, but a demand question of
which economies are in position to absorb those exports and put them to
use in their economic recovery. This will be one of the central
questions for the years ahead," he said. At the Fifth Plenary Session, Xi said "victory was in sight" in terms
of China achieving a moderately prosperous society in all respects in
time for next year's 100th anniversary of the CPC. Roach, also a former head of Asia and chief economist at investment
bank Morgan Stanley, said China's record on poverty reduction "is
unprecedented in the annals of modern global history". He added it was possible to have confidence in the future direction
it has now set by how it has dealt with both the global financial crisis
in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic this year. "China's relative successes in dealing with two major global crises
in the past dozen years certainly stand in sharp contrast with the
approach of other leading nations," he said.
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