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Opinion | A pro-business third plenum is China’s best retort to US, EU gauntlet
- Faced with difficult EV negotiations with Europe and the possibility of a Trump return, strong pro-business signals from Beijing now would help
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Why you can trust SCMP
China finds itself at a crossroads – after many years of the government recognising a structural imbalance in the Chinese economy, there does not seem to have been a definitive solution found. China wants to boost its economic development and the third plenum should give us some important clues as to which way it intends to go.
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The government’s top priority is social stability and for that, economic growth is key. I believe that bolstering the role of the private sector and creating conditions for entrepreneurship to flourish can be of immense benefit to China’s economic development.
I think we will see a repeat of what Premier Li Qiang said at the 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions by the World Economic Forum in Dalian recently about giving more space to the private sector to innovate, and providing more support for foreign investments in China.
For China to continue its robust and open economic interaction with the rest of the world is in everyone’s interest and hopefully the third plenum’s outcome can show signs of travel in that direction.
Signs of some of the headwinds China faces as it prepares for the third plenum were in evidence at the Dalian forum. There was a noticeable lack of Western engagement and this was unfortunate.
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The World Economic Forum is a well-established and influential forum to tackle pressing key global issues and for those who stayed away, it is a missed opportunity. It seemed to me there were fewer international participants in Dalian this time. There were fewer of the usual big corporate executives we usually meet in Davos, Switzerland.
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