Russia claimed on Thursday that its forces hit Ukrainian military targets in multiple places while Ukraine reported on the same day its troops repelled Russian attacks as fierce battles raged on between the warring parties.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a briefing Thursday that the Russian aviation, missile, artillery units struck Ukrainian forces and equipment storage facilities in 137 spots as well as a drone factory.
Furthermore, the Russian military reported control over the Zarya settlement in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region and the Novoivanovka settlement in the Russia's Kursk region where Ukraine launched a surprise offensive in August.
On the same day, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported 138 fights on the front lines as of Thursday afternoon. Ukraine forces also announced they had destroyed multiple Russian military assembly areas and repelled nine Russian attacks in the Kursk region.
Russia strikes Ukrainian military targets, Ukraine reports intense front line battles
China's annual Central Economic Work Conference, which was held in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday, reaffirmed the country's long-term economic resilience and decided priorities for the economic work in 2025 such as high-quality development, domestic demand expansion, and stability-driven progress amid external challenges.
The conference emphasized that despite the increasing adverse effects of changes in the external environment and the numerous challenges facing the economy, the fundamentals of China's economy remain unchanged, and they will maintain long-term growth.
Mapping out next year's economic priorities, the conference stressed the need to adhere to the principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability.
Experts pointed out that the notion of "stability" means achieving the high-quality stability.
"First, we aim to maintain stable economic growth, prices and employment, for example. At the same time, we need to ensure internal and external balance, such as keeping the balance of international payments. This overarching concept of stability is, in fact, a high-quality stability, as it will be underpinned by a range of policies designed to drive economic transformation and achieve sustained high-quality development," said Wang Jinbin, deputy dean of the School of Economics at Renmin University of China.
The conference listed priorities in nine aspects for the nation's economic work in 2025, with the top priority being the comprehensive expansion of domestic demand.
"The first priority is to boost overall demand, particularly within the domestic market, as we cannot overly rely on external markets. Secondly, we need to focus on driving consumption. Increasing demand and consumption, while linking consumption with public welfare, is particularly important. Looking at China's consumption trends, the biggest growth potential lies in service consumption. Currently, goods consumption accounts for 31 percent of GDP, which is already significant. However, service consumption, such as education, healthcare, culture, sports, entertainment, and tourism, remains relatively low, leaving substantial room for growth," said Zhu Min, vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
The priorities in nine aspects are as follows: vigorously boosting consumption and making investment more productive; leading the development of new quality productive forces through scientific and technological innovation, and build a modernized industrial system; leveraging the leading role of economic structural reform, and ensuring the implementation and effectiveness of key reform measures; pursuing higher-standard opening up; effectively preventing and resolving risks in key areas, safeguard the baseline of preventing systemic risks, and continue to vigorously stabilize the real estate market; advance new urbanization and all-round rural revitalization in a coordinated manner, and promote integrated urban-rural development; intensifying the implementation of regional strategies and enhance the vitality of regional development; making concerted efforts to cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, expand green areas, and accelerate the all-round green transformation of economic and social development; and strengthening efforts to guarantee and improve people's livelihood, and increase people's sense of gain, happiness and security.
"Regarding next year's economic work, we still put emphasis on seeking progress while maintaining stability, but at the same time, we also stress the need to promote stability through progress. What does this mean? It means utilizing technological innovation, the development of new quality productive forces, and structural adjustments to drive steady economic growth. Greater emphasis will be placed on systematic integration and the coordination among policies including fiscal, monetary, industrial and regional policies to ensure that these policies will work in harmony to enhance macroeconomic policy coherence so as to achieve economic recovery and growth," said Bi Jiyao, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research.
China's top meeting maps out plan for economic work in 2025, prioritizing high-quality development
