- Development process during the 14th 'five-year plan' period is "extremely unusual and extraordinary"
- China's economic strength and comprehensive national strength has jumped to a whole new level
- To make greater efforts to protect and improve people's livelihood
- To continue to expand domestic demand, optimise supply conditions
- Will implement more active and promising macro policies
- And also enhance forward-looking and targeted coordination of policies
- To adhere to the tone of seeking progress while maintaining stability
- And also coordinate the overall situation domestically and abroad
- To focus on stabilising employment, enterprises, markets, and expectations
- Necessary to continue to implement a more active fiscal policy, moderately loose monetary policy
- To strengthen the coordination between reform measures and macro policies
- To strengthen construction of the government itself, firmly establish and practice the correct view of political performance
The headlines in bold are what I would deem as notable but the overall message is one that we've seen repeated for quite a while now. The biggest challenge for China since the property market crash has been trying to revive domestic demand conditions. And until today, that remains one of the government's biggest hurdles in trying to get the local economy to prosper again.
The outline of needing to pursue more proactive fiscal policy and "moderately loose" monetary policy reaffirms the overall dual policy direction that Beijing has been sticking to in recent years. So, there's no changes there as we look to 2026.
Besides that, China is also making it clear that they also focused on market developments - especially when it comes to the yuan currency and the dollar. We've already seen a glimpse of that earlier in the day here but they might have to do more if the greenback continues to weaken this year.
As a reminder, a weaker Chinese yuan was China's first line of buffer against Trump and his tariffs. As such, an even weaker dollar pretty much neutralises the playing field. A struggling dollar in that respect maximises the pain from tariffs and hurts competition from other countries more.
