China’s economy prospers with vitality

By Du Yifei, People’s Daily

Chinese economy is revealing huge vitality, and that is vividly reflected by the daily life of the Chinese people.

As new business models, technologies and applications are springing up, Chinese people are embracing large numbers of innovative applications such as facial recognition payment, smart homes, and self-service supermarkets.

Chinese “shopaholics”, buying cherries from Chile, vodka from Russia, chocolate from Austria, and cosmetics from Japan, are also in turn contributing to the world’s economic growth.

From bullet trains that are able to complete a thousand-kilometer round trip within half a day, to express delivery services that reach customers within half an hour, and to a 5G network that enables users to download a movie in half a second, the constantly improving “Chinese speed” is renewing the lifestyles of the Chinese people.

These changes all demonstrate the stable progress of Chinese economy. China is well conditioned to maintain stable, healthy and sustainable economic development despite the risks from the external environment.

To be specific, China enjoys huge resource potential. The country has a GDP of 90 trillion yuan, which makes it a giant vessel sailing deep and stable in the sea of the global economy.

China has a population of nearly 1.4 billion, of which 900 million are in the labor force, and 170 million are highly educated and skilled human resources. Besides, China has the world’s largest middle-income class, as well as more than 100 million market entities. Such a large-scale industrial cluster, together with rich intellectual resources and a huge market size, is making China attractive to global investors.

Dr. Harley Seyedin, President of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, speaks for many when he said that the Chinese market is full of attraction and hard to resist.

Furthermore, China has a strong endogenous power for development. Consumption has remained the largest driving force for China’s economic growth for five years in a row. In 2018, domestic demand contributed 108.6 percent to the country’s economic growth, 76.2 percent of which came from final consumption.

What is noticeable is that China’s consumption growth maintains a simultaneous process with the expanding demand and upgrading consumption structure. As estimated, China’s service consumption is still keeping a double digit growth, and the expansion of consumption will continue to boost the economic growth.

In addition, China boasts its vitality for development. Currently, China is the world’s second largest spender on research and development (R&D), investing 2.18 percent of its GDP in this sector. Such investment is leading to continuous expansion of new driving forces such as strategic emerging industries and shared economy.

From 2015 to 2017, the indicators of the growth of new economic drivers increased by 28 percent on average annually. Last year, the new driving forces contributed more than two thirds to the newly added jobs, 191 million of which were created in the digital economy sector.

A recently released report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) revealed that China’s Global Innovation Index (GII) continued to rise this year, jumping to the fourteenth place from the seventeenth place in 2018. In terms of the quality of innovation, China has been ranking top among the middle-income countries for seven years in a row. Meanwhile, the country has racked up 18 of the top 100 science and technology clusters.

In the new era, China still guides its development with new philosophies, and takes high-quality development as a fundamental requirement. Focusing on supply-side reform, the country has continuously improved macro control and gained valuable experiences in development.

As it is said in a blog released by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, China is making active efforts to promote its economic transformation. It is giving more weight to the quality of growth and technological innovations and opening up a path for sustainable development.