China closes its parliamentary session, dominated by economic difficulties

The Asian giant, which posted staggering growth rates in the 1990s and 2000s, set itself last week at the opening of Parliament a much more modest objective for 2024, at “around 5%”.

The government has made no secret of the scale of the challenges facing the country.

He admitted that this 5% growth target will be "not easy" to achieve and that "latent economic risks" in certain sectors continued to drag the economy down. Without, however, announcing a plan detailing ways to resolve the problems.

Deputies of the National People's Assembly (ANP), meeting behind closed doors on Monday for further deliberations, formally voted on several bills during a closing session in the afternoon.

Among the texts voted on is a revision of the organic law (the law organizing administrative powers) which, according to state media, aims in particular to confirm more formally - if necessary - the control of the ruling Communist Party over the government. .

Only a few MPs abstained or voted against.

Rain of praise

Almost all of the approximately 3.000 deputies also validated the state budget as well as the economic and social development plan for this year.

Having come specially to Beijing for the parliamentary session, many of them were not stingy with their rave comments.

Ling Youshi, representative of the semi-autonomous territory of Hong Kong, praised “the degree of meticulousness of the deliberations”.

The parliamentary session “encourages us to move forward with courage,” Lü Caixia, a delegate from the rich coastal province of Jiangsu (east), told the press.

The government has "a good understanding of the reality" on the ground, Li Dexiang, MP for Guizhou (southwest), a mountainous and still underdeveloped province, insisted to AFP.

Several ministers called over the weekend to do more to boost employment and stabilize a real estate market in crisis, with prices falling for many months and developers fighting for their survival.

“The overall pressure on employment has not diminished and there are still structural contradictions to be resolved,” Wang Xiaoping, Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, said at a press conference on Saturday.

“A portion of workers are facing employment challenges and problems, and more efforts need to be made to stabilize employment,” she added.

"Very difficult"

The Minister of Housing, Ni Hong, admitted that stabilizing the real estate market remained a “still very difficult” task.

Beyond these calls, many economic analysts say they have not yet seen the announcement of decisive government measures.

“To revive the economy, we must increase household wealth and income, which Chinese leaders are clearly not yet ready to do” for reasons in particular of public finances, analysts from the Trivium firm commented in a note. , based in China.

The authorities announced last week, to everyone's surprise, that the Prime Minister's press conference, an essential event organized at the end of each parliamentary session since the 1990s, will finally no longer take place.

The meeting, certainly very orchestrated, was nevertheless an opportunity for the Chinese and international press to ask questions to the head of government and number two in the communist hierarchy, traditionally responsible for economic issues.

Proof of the sensitivity of the subject: the hashtag referring to the cancellation of the press conference was quickly removed from search results on the social network Weibo.

Parliamentary leaders also called during this session to vote in 2024 on new laws relating to security in order to “safeguard” “sovereignty”, which in practice will make it possible to strengthen the absolute authority of the Communist Party.