Xi Jinping speech calling for patience released amid China’s economic gloom
- Party mouthpiece highlights president’s address to top cadres in February, hours after more weak economic data was published
- Xi says the country ‘cannot simply follow the beaten path’ and stresses that common prosperity is a ‘long-term mission’
Xi was addressing hundreds of top party members during the February 7 speech, part of which was published in the official Qiushi journal on Tuesday – hours after Beijing released more disappointing monthly economic data.
The party journal regularly highlights internal leadership speeches months after they are given.
Tuesday’s article emphasised the difficulties of modernising a country of China’s size and said its unique development model was still its best hope.
It asked the public to take the long view and stay focused, balancing progress and stability with sustainability.
“We should first consider the size of the population and the large rural-urban development gap. We cannot be ambitious and unrealistic, but we cannot simply follow the beaten path,” Xi was quoted as saying by Quishi.
“We should be patient [with a historical perspective] and move forward in a steadfast manner.”
Xi gave the speech months after his historic third term as party leader began in October and ahead of the annual parliamentary meetings in Beijing.
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The part of the speech published in Qiushi focused on the task of steering one of the world’s most populous countries towards a national renaissance and stressed the need for patience and perseverance.
“A super big population can provide sufficient manpower and a super big domestic market, but it also brings about a series of difficulties and challenges,” Xi told his new team in February.
“It is quite a challenge just to make sure 1.4 billion people are fed. Then there are problems such as employment, [wealth] distribution, education, healthcare, housing, elderly care and childcare. They are all not easy to resolve and they all involve an astronomical number of people.”
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The latest economic data has prompted fears about the country’s slowdown, which analysts say will not be turned around by measures such as interest rate cuts that were also announced on Tuesday.
China is also reeling from widespread flooding in recent weeks, while there is growing pressure from demographic problems such as a low birth rate and a rapidly greying society.
Xi also spoke about the middle-income trap, where countries fail to emerge as high-income.
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“Some developing countries have almost reached the threshold of developed countries in their process of modernisation, but they have fallen into the middle-income trap and been stuck in stagnation for a long time or even backtracked substantially,” Xi said.
“One of the reasons is that they have not resolved [social] polarisation and stratification.”
Xi said the common prosperity policy was a “long-term mission” that must be carried out persistently and make continuous progress.
Calling the policy the essence of Chinese modernisation, Xi condemned Western modernisation, saying it maximised the interests of capitalists and was characterised by “wars, slavery, colonisation and exploitation”.
Common prosperity – a policy aimed at narrowing the wealth gap – has caused anxiety among entrepreneurs and foreign companies in recent years, but Beijing denies it is seeking to suppress private enterprises.
Alfred Wu Muluan, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said the Qiushi article was aimed at boosting confidence.
“At a time when an economic crisis is looming, the party wants to paint a rosy picture … to ensure people that the goals Xi has set are realistic and that China’s path is unique and better than the West’s,” he said.
