Balanced development preoccupies China

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The second session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) opened at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. Policy discussions and planning will take place through March 15, setting the country's goals for 2019. Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders attended the opening meeting. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivered a government work report to lawmakers.

Sustainable development is the central preoccupation

"I would like to borrow the words from the report by the premier that is ambitious yet at the same time realistic," said Xu Qinduo, a senior fellow at the Pangoal Institution.

In Xu's opinion, China's ambition is to maintain economic growth at a stable 6.6 percent level, while at the same time to achieve the goals of alleviating poverty and reducing pollution.

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"This requires sophisticated skills, sophistical policy making, and this is very impressive," Xu told CGTN.

Einar Tangen, a current affairs commentator, shares the same insights with Xu. According to him, emphasizing development as the most impressive part of the government work report.

"And the other thing that really strikes me is that with China, it's all about development," Tangen told CGTN

Tangen concludes that "while the U.S has put many efforts on ideology since Donald Trump took office, China has been preoccupied with development, especially a sustainable development that seeks economic and environmental profits at the same time."

China's economy continues upward trend

Xu deftly disposes of the argument that China's economy went downhill. As he notes, the Chinese government is making out all those sophisticated measures to stimulate the economy. The main measure to achieve the goal is cutting taxes for small business and micro businesses.

"I'm pretty sure that will ensure a long term stable growth at the same time. Remember, you know, the growth pattern is a bit different from that in the past," Xu told CGTN.

As Tangen points out, over the past four years, China has not been suffering from an economic recession. Instead, China has achieved economic growth during the period.

"You have a very more nuanced approach as China grows, but just to put it in terms of real numbers for you, if you go back to 2015 to 2016, you are talking about an increase of about 5.5 trillion RMB to the GDP, the next year, it was 8 trillion. This last year was still 8 trillion," Tangen told CGTN.

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As Tangen observes, China's economy performs better than that of the U.S. based on data.

"Now, to put that in perspective, the U.S. is about half of that (4 trillion U.S. dollars) in U.S. dollars at their 2.9 percent increase. The US is literally half, so China is still continuing to grow at a monumental rate," Tangen told CGTN.

Success in poverty alleviation

Both Xu and Tangen think that poverty alleviation is another notable achievement of the Chinese government over the past year, and it has been the highlight of the government work report.

In Xu's opinion, China has been working hard at helping financially disadvantaged groups escape the vicious circle of poverty. The Chinese government's work has paid off already, as the number of people living on low incomes has fallen.

"If you look at another issue of the vision, poverty alleviation, the target remains the same as last year, that eleven hundred million of the poor people, so then after this year that would be about like six million people left," Xu told CGTN.

As for the future, Xu is optimistic that the number of people living in poverty will fall in 2020.

According to Tangen, those still in poverty are the most difficult to get out of it.

"Just remember as we're draining down to the last, I mean the most difficult ones are now at the end," Tangen said. He suggested that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Script by Chu Xiaoji

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)