China will try to return to high GDP growth at the expense of the consumer

After the lifting of anti-coronavirus restrictions within the country and for those coming from outside, the Chinese authorities set ambitious goals in the economy. According to the Chinese authorities and economists, GDP growth in 2023 should be between 4.5% and 5.5% and approach the pre-Covid indicators of 6.1%. The fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping and his associates are determined to achieve such indicators of GDP growth was reported by Bloomberg on January 11, citing the dean of the Institute of Public Development at Peking University, Yao Yang, who is used by the CCP to develop an economic policy. As evidence of the ambitions of the Chinese leaders, the traditional meeting on economic work held under the auspices of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee at the end of 2022 is cited. At it, the Chinese leadership set goals for 2023, while the fight against COVID-19 was practically not taken into account.

The goal of the new tactics of the Chinese authorities to abruptly remove anti-COVID measures may be to pass the peak of the incidence as quickly as possible. On the one hand, such tactics can lead to economic problems in early 2023 due to the massive infection with the coronavirus, but at the same time increases the likelihood of strong GDP growth following its results. Bloomberg experts have no doubt that household consumption in China will recover quickly after the opening of the country, which was shown in 2022 by the examples of Hong Kong and Taiwan. At the same time, according to Yao Yang’s calculations, for the GDP growth planned in the range of 4.5-5.5%, Chinese consumer spending should increase by more than 6%.