China Aims For 6 Pct Economic Growth, Big Tech Investments

There was talk about making big investments in technology and aiming for 6 percent growth as China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, met this week in Beijing. The announcements came despite the ongoing worldwide pandemic and warnings from Big Tech that China’s not far behind the U.S. in terms of technological advancement.

Google’s former CEO recently told Congress that there is an urgent need to increase the pace of technology innovation to keep up with China. The threat of China’s swift advancements in technology is “very, very real,” said Eric Schmidt.

China’s government told the National People’s Congress this week that the big plan is to increase annual spending on research and development by more than 7 percent every year over the next five years, Reuters reported. In addition, the plan calls for increasing the budget for basic research by 10.6 percent this year. These plans emphasize the country’s commitment to ramping up such spending, even as China’s political and economic programs come under increasing criticism.

As well, Chinese leaders reportedly said they are looking to have the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) grow by 6 percent or more this year. While this is a modest target for such an economic powerhouse, it shows that the country’s leaders believe the worst of the pandemic’s economic crisis is behind them.

In addition, The Wall Street Journal reported that the overall plan calls for having the urban unemployment rate no higher than 5.5 percent, while increasing the country’s urbanization rate to 65 percent, up from nearly 61 percent in 2019. The other goal is to create 11 million new jobs this year, up from the 2020 target of 9 million.

China’s was the only major economy to grow in 2020. The country’s economy expanded by 2.3 percent, even though the Chinese city of Wuhan got hit with the first COVID-19 outbreak.

Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday (March 5) that the central government would somewhat reduce the amount of debt that local governments can issue. Beijing plans to allow localities to issue 3.65 trillion yuan, the equivalent of $580 billion, in local government special-purpose bonds in 2021. That’s down from the 3.75 trillion yuan allowed last year. Most of the proceeds from such bond sales go to infrastructure projects, noted the WSJ.