China’s economy faces ‘complex environments’ and headwinds to policy goals for 2022, Premier Li warns

‘It’s like climbing a high mountain,’ Li Keqiang says in last major press conference of his premiership, speaking to the challenges that China faces in realising ‘around 5.5 per cent’ GDP growth

Global uncertainties such as Russia-Ukraine war and tensions with West pose outsized threat to China’s economic goals, but Beijing remains confident

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Premier Li Keqiang spoke on Friday at the last major press conference of his premiership, and the two-and-a-half-hour speech was broadcast on large screens in Beijing. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:15pm, 11 Mar 2022Updated: 5:13pm, 18 Mar 2022

Premier Li Keqiang has pledged that China will offer up a variety of “oxygen-supplying” measures to help counter risks to economic growth in 2022.

At the last major press conference of his 10-year tenure, Li called the coronavirus pandemic the “biggest challenge” of his second term. He also struck a cautiously optimistic tone on achieving gross domestic product (GDP) growth of “around 5.5 per cent” this year, to dispel market worries triggered by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, scattered coronavirus outbreaks and rising global uncertainties.

“A variety of complex environments are evolving. Uncertain factors are rising,” Li said. “It must be supported with relevant macro policies.”

Since rising to the premiership in 2013, Li, 66, has spearheaded the nation’s economic transformation and promoted “mass entrepreneurship and innovation”, with the pace of expansion falling from previous trends of double-digit growth amid a dwindling demographic dividend, higher indebtedness and industrial overcapacity.

His second term was accompanied by a trade war with the United States that has forced the government to rely more heavily on the domestic market and home-grown technological innovations for growth; an unprecedented pandemic that has entered its third year; spillover effects of the US Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening; and geopolitical conflicts.

“It’s like climbing a high mountain,” the premier said of the government’s efforts to meet its desired development targets in the face of intense and numerous headwinds.