Annual report boosts China and the world economy confidence

As for social development, the new plan particularly specifies different methods to deal with the most pressing issues of housing and house prices. For the smaller cities where house prices are still low and houses are oversupplied, more incentives will be provided to buyers to reduce the housing stock and to encourage rural-urban resettlement. For the first-tier cities where house prices are unusually high, local governments are urged to provide more land for home construction. The urban housing redevelopment program will create six million new homes, and more investments will be made to develop more economic housing to meet the breakneck demand for urban housing of the poor and low income people.

It is proposed that 13 million rural people will become urban residents in 2017. In addition, 10 million rural poor people will be moved out of absolute poverty. Of those, 3.4 million people will be relocated from remote areas to the more prosperous localities as part of the country’s campaign to eliminate poverty by 2020.

In 2017, China will invest 0.8 trillion yuan for railway construction and another 1.8 trillion yuan for highway and waterway expansion. This continuing and ambitious investment plan will provide a solid foundation for economic growth to make sure that the growth target can be achieved.

There are other detailed planned targets of China’s social and economic development. All the targets are based on the following three considerations: actual achievement in 2016, the current internal/external economic constraints and the country’s needs for achieving the overall targets of the 13th Five Year Plan during 2016-2020.

To some extent, Li's targets have built in some flexibilities, suggesting that they are not only achievable but also flexible, with some room for overachieving. As a result, this report and the proposed new development plan provide an immense confidence for China and the rest of the world, as based on this plan, China will continue to be the world’s most important economic growth engine in the foreseeable future to come.

Shujie Yao is Chueng Kong Professor of Economics at Chongqing University and the University of Nottingham.