China sets sights on ‘powerful home market’ to drive growth through 2019 trade turmoil
- Leadership focuses on domestic agenda to suggest it is not caving in to US demands, analyst says
China will try to develop “a powerful home market” to help offset external uncertainties next year, the country’s top leadership agreed on Thursday, roughly two weeks into a 90-day truce in the trade war with the United States.
The Politburo, the country’s highest decision-making body, said China still had a “strategic window of opportunity” and “must firmly focus on getting its own goals accomplished”, state-run Xinhua reported, signalling Beijing’s determination to limit the fallout from the trade tensions on its domestic agenda.
In a meeting that will set the direction for economic policy next year, the Politburo, headed by President Xi Jinping, said China should view the “latest changes in the international environment and domestic conditions” – a veiled reference to the trade war with the US and its drag on the domestic economy – in a “dialectic” manner of looking at the opposing forces at work. It also stressed the need to “keep our strategic focus and proceed in a steady manner”.
The statement comes after Xi and US President Donald Trump agreed to the truce on December 1.
Standard Chartered chief China economist Ding Shuang said Xi was trying to tell the public not to be “too pessimistic” about the trade war and the country’s economic outlook.
“Xi is trying to say that there are bad things [happening] but there are still good things,” Ding said.
