China News - 30 October 2020
Fifth plenum: Chinese leaders endorse ambitious economic plans for the year ahead. The fifth plenum - the key annual political meeting in China - concluded on Thursday. After four days of deliberations, the party’s 200-member Central Committee signed off on a planning blueprint through to 2025. A communique was released yesterday with brief details of the meeting, accompanied by a press conference. There were almost no surprises in the details released, which broadly aligned with expected announcements around domestic self-reliance and an emphasis on emerging technologies. We can expect much more detail of individual guidelines and regulations over the next few months. But the communique did say China plans to boost its GDP per capita to a level on par with moderate developed countries by 2035.
Key analysis in the news:
Leadership: The non-mention of any civilian appointment to the military commission highlights the absence of any leader-in-waiting to succeed Xi - a notable gap in China’s otherwise comprehensive strategic planning. The Economist
Consolidation of power: ‘With Mr. Xi as “the core navigator and helmsman,” an official summary from the meeting read, “we will certainly be able to conquer the range of hardships and dangers that lie on the path forward.”’ NYT and China Media Project
Domestic demand: China’s president has also outlined a new “dual circulation” economic strategy, which prioritises the importance of strengthening domestic demand and technological innovation over closer integration with the outside world. FT
Big picture: ‘It is an aspirational document which is full of confidence while clear about the risks and challenges…The Plenum communique says that China is still in a period of important strategic opportunity, as the world is “undergoing changes unseen in a century”.’ Sinocism analysis
Decoupling: Chinese officials speaking in the post-plenum press conference said a complete decoupling with the U.S. is "unrealistic" because of the corresponding nature of their economic structures, despite Beijing now relying less on foreign trade for growth. Nikkei
Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy on China: “… What you see now is a Foreign Office that is being increasingly assertive at pushing back at some of the actions from the Chinese government, but a Treasury that is chasing Chinese investment to rebuild the economy post COVID and a business department that is seriously considering handing over a great chunk of our nuclear power technology to a company backed by the Chinese government.” Politico, 29 October
Mike Pompeo pledges US support for Asian allies that resist China. The US secretary of state denounced Beijing’s “unlawful” claims in the South China Sea yesterday as he continued a tour of southern Asia aimed at bolstering resistance to the country’s influence in the region. The Times, 30 October
China watch
China’s 7m enumerators begin the world’s largest census. The last such count, in 2010, found that China’s total population was growing only half as swiftly as it did between 1991-2000, and last year saw China’s lowest birth rate since 1961. The Economist, 30 October.
New China regional GDP data shows growing economic divide, exacerbated by coronavirus. Regional economic divergences have widened in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, both between coastal and inland provinces and between the north and south. SCMP, 30 October
Economy & tech
Wary of security issues, Japan's government moves to shut China out of its government drone supply chain. Reuters, 30 October
China's Xiaomi surpasses Apple as world's No. 3 smartphone maker. Reuters, Nikkei, 30 October
Longer reads & opinion
If China’s economy is so strong, why isn’t its currency stronger? Although foreign reserves have held steady, foreign assets held by commercial banks in China have soared by $125bn since April. The Economist, 28 October
Covid is killing faith in western democracy: Johnson and Merkel are mindful that confidence is ebbing away as the liberal West is outperformed by the statist East. James Forsyth in The Times, 30 October
Religious freedom in China: The war against Chinese Christians. Charles Parton in Standpoint, 30 October