Opinion

 

1. Making the most of China's potential for economic growth

 

Reform and opening up is an endogenous driving force for China's economic growth and a key move for economic development. The 2023 Central Economic Work Conference emphasized the need to advance reform and opening up with greater determination and strength, coordinate in-depth reform and high-level opening up, fully utilize the decisive role of market in resource allocation, better leverage the role of government, continuously liberate and develop social productive forces, stimulate and enhance social vitality. Standing at a new historical starting point, we must better utilize this driving mechanism, continuously improve total factor productivity, and unleash the structural potential of China's economic growth.

 

2. Why foreign investment is now attracted to central and western regions

The comparative advantages of central and western regions in terms of population, labor force and market size are gradually coming to the fore with the ongoing promotion of regional coordinated development strategies, particularly the core advantages of low cost and solid foundation, which have a strong magnetic field effect on foreign investment.

 

Policy

 

1. With an emphasis on laying the groundwork for emerging fields like artificial intelligence, quantum information, and biomedicine, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council recently chose the first group of start-up businesses based on the "four news" (new track, new technology, new platform, new mechanism) standards.

 

2. The People's Bank of China's Shanghai Branch, Shanghai Municipal Party Committee's Financial Office, and Shanghai Supervision Bureau of the National Financial Regulatory Administration collaborated to release a notice recently that highlighted twenty key initiatives to support the private sector. Activities for bank enterprise matchmaking and targeted policy promotion will take place in April.

 

3. Offshore trade in the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Lingang new area will be exempt from stamp tax in a trial that aims to boost the development of offshore trade. The new policy, effective from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025, will benefit entities registered in the zone that conduct offshore trade business, according to an announcement jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration.

 

Data

 

1. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, from January to February the total revenue of China’s state-owned enterprises reached RMB 12.487 trillion, up 1.9 percent year on year, with total profit of RMB 628.53 billion, up 0.3 percent year on year.

 

2. More than 900,000 inbound travelers in China used mobile payment from January to February, with more than 20 million transactions amounting to more than RMB 3 billion, said the People’s Bank of China.

 

3. Goods imported and exported through China-Laos Railway reached 1.38 million tons in the first quarter of this year, up 33.6 percent, hitting record high, as data from Kunming Customs showed.

 

4. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the value-added industrial output of major companies in China's electronic information manufacturing sector rose by 14.6 percent year on year in the first two months of 2024. Among the products, the output of cellphones reached 234 million, up 26.4 percent year on year.

 

5. The industrialization rate of invention patents owned by Chinese enterprises reached 51.3 percent in 2023, increasing by 3.2 percentage points compared to the previous year, marking the fifth consecutive year of growth, according to China National Intellectual Property Administration.

 

6. China's medical equipment market totaled RMB 1.27 trillion in market capitalization in 2023, 10.4 percent higher than that of the previous year, as announced by the China Association of Medical Equipment. China has remained the world's second-largest single market for medical equipment.

 

7. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said that there were more than 1.26 million registered unmanned aerial vehicles in China at the end of 2023, up 32 percent year on year, and civilian drones flew a total of more than 23 million hours in 2023.

 

8. The port of Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge recorded more than 6 million travelers and 1.15 million vehicles crossing the border to mainland through the bridge, up 180 percent and 120 percent year on year respectively, both hitting record high. 

 

9. Statistics from the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing showed that the logistics prosperity index (LPI) came in at 51.5 percent in March, up 4.4 percentage points on a monthly basis, while China's warehousing index reached 52.6 percent in March, up 8.1 percentage points from a month earlier, back to the expansion zone.

 

10. The total economic output of China’s Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area exceeded RMB 14 trillion in 2023, achieving one ninth of China's total with less than 0.6 percent of the national territorial area, according to the local authorities.

 

(Source: Economic Daily)