Plans by central economic meeting to boost economic growth: experts

The plans made at China's annual Central Economic Work Conference about the development of manufacturing, emerging industries, regional strategies, and people's livelihood are set to boost economic growth and make life better for people in 2025, according to experts.

In a speech at the conference held in Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, reviewed the country's economic work in 2024, analyzed the current economic situation and arranged the economic work for the next year.

According to the meeting, China will ramp up efforts to lead the development of new quality productive forces through scientific and technological innovation to build a modernized industrial system, launch an AI Plus initiative to nurture industries of the future, and also address rat-race irrational competition and regulate behaviors of local governments and enterprises.

"China's manufacturing sector accounts for 30.3 percent of the global total, so how to transform manufacturing into high-tech becomes particularly important. In the first 20 years of reform and opening up, we made China's manufacturing the most cost-effective in the world, and in the following 20 years, we made it both cost-effective and of high-quality. In the next 20 years, we will integrate innovation and industries to make manufacturing cost-effective, of high quality and high-tech," said Zhu Min, a senior expert at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges.

"In the process of developing strategic emerging industries, I have seen rat-race irrational competition in some industries. The central government has also seen the problem and has clearly proposed to rectify it. This is indeed conducive to improving the industrial ecology, so that a better benefit distribution can be formed between the upstream and downstream enterprises, and more small and medium-sized enterprises can get more growth opportunities," said Dong Yu, executive vice president of the China Institute for Development Planning at Tsinghua University.

It was also noted at the meeting that China will give play to the integrated effect of coordinated regional development strategy, major regional strategies, and the functional zoning strategy, and actively foster new growth poles.

Experts say that the integration of the three strategies is a new proposal, meaning that the country has charted a clear course for local governments to pursue development in accordance with local conditions.

"The integration of the three strategies suggests that we need to better implement the central government's intentions on economic work through the requirements of spatial layout in spatial units at different levels, which is going to be a very important guideline for local governments to formulate their work plans for next year," said Dong.

The meeting also emphasized the need to increase residents' income in line with economic growth, optimize the structure of fiscal expenditure, and pay more attention to improving the well-being of the people, promote consumption, and sustain growth momentum.

China will also step up efforts to ensure and improve people's wellbeing, so as to give its people a growing sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security, according to the meeting.

"The meeting also noted that the growth of people's income should exceed the growth of GDP. This is a particularly important policy. If the country wants to boost domestic consumption, the premise is that residents must have money. So people's livelihood must be placed as a top priority. At the same time, we have also seen a series of reform and opening-up measures on sectors like pension insurance and the establishment of a new medical system. In fact, the policies on improving people's livelihood will be intensified next year, mainly to give the people a better sense of fulfillment," said Zhu.

Plans by central economic meeting to boost economic growth: experts

Scholars warned of a "history education crisis" in Japan as the country's textbooks have obscured its aggressive wars against China in an attempt to cover up the barbaric crimes during World War II. They called on the Japanese government to face up to the aggressive history while attending a meeting themed "Remembering History, Protecting Peace Together" at the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Tokyo on Nov 26.

In recent years, some Japanese politicians have been flagrantly obscuring and whitewashing Japan's aggressive history, which has been met with opposition and boycotts.

"The Japanese government holds obvious double standards in its attitudes toward history when facing its people and the international community. For the victims, the double standard proves a lack of reflection and is not convincing. I think, what the Japanese government does is hardly a true reflection," said Ishida Ryuji, visiting fellow of the International Peace Research Institute of Meiji Gakuin University.

Some scholars also stressed that Japanese textbooks are failing to reflect accurate history, creating a vicious circle that bars teachers from knowing full facts and students even less.

"Some content which was previously in the textbooks was removed. Some parts of the history were not allowed to be taught in detail in the classroom, but I issue additional materials to my students and explain the history to them," said Ogino Fujio, director of the Chinese Returnees Federation Memorial Hall.

"When I was a teacher, I taught my students the history not written in the textbook, telling them what Japan did in China. However, there is less and less content on this part of the history in the textbooks these days. If the young history teachers don't learn the history by themselves, they will not know the full facts and will not be able to teach true history to children. This will create a vicious circle, which I think is history's education crisis," said Akiyama Hiroshi, director of the Japan-China Friendship August 15th Meeting.

Scholars criticize Japan's history education system for downplaying aggression against China