China’s leaders have given almost equal weight to security and reform at an annual economic meeting that sets policy for the following year, according to a Financial Times analysis, amid investor concern that policymakers are more focused on geopolitics than much-needed structural changes.
Beijing released a detailed statement on the Central Economic Work Conference, which was held on Monday and Tuesday, and pledged to pursue measures ranging from “proactive fiscal policies” to tax breaks for strategic industries in 2024.
An FT analysis that compared key words used by the Communist party in this year’s statement with previous years showed that “development”, or economic growth, was the most popular term this year with 50 mentions compared with 45 in 2022 and 40 pre-pandemic in 2019.