20th Party Congress Report

On October 16, the first day of the week-long 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping delivered the 20th Party Congress report. The report, which is a summary of the speech Xi Jinping gave on the first day of the congress, looks back upon the achievements since the previous congress and earlier, and outlines the country and the party’s underlying policy agenda for the following five-year term.To get more news about 20th CPC national congress, you can visit shine news official website.

In this article, we look at how the report sheds light upon China’s development trajectory across five key areas: foreign investment and market opening, technological development, green development and climate targets, social welfare and development, and COVID-19.

Long-term goals
The long-term goal set forth in the report is to “comprehensively build a powerful modern socialist country”. This goal is to be achieved in two phases: basically achieving modern socialism from 2020 to 2035 and building a great modern socialist country that is “prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful” from 2035 to 2050.
Foreign investment and market opening
The report makes a few references to foreign investment, businesses, and market opening, and though it does not provide new information on related policies, it still underscores China’s basic position of continued market opening. It also underlines that foreign investment and businesses will continue to have an important role in China’s future development in a few key ways.

First, the report calls for implementing a “more active opening strategy”. This will include building a network of high-standard free trade zones (FTZs) and accelerating the construction of pilot FTZs and the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP).
The report also states that China has become the largest trading partner for over 140 countries and regions and is the number one destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) in the world, clearly illustrating the importance of foreign trade and investment to the country.

Second, the report makes it clear that foreign investment and business will be a core tenant of the country’s “high-quality development”, which in itself was an important component of the report.

The report mentions the role of foreign investment and business in the scope of China’s “dual circulation” strategy, through which China will strive to “attract global resources with the domestic cycle, enhance links between domestic and international markets, and improve the quality and level of trade and investment cooperation”.
Another aspect of achieving “high-quality development” is to improve the business environment more generally, which in turn will also benefit foreign investors and businesses. Though only briefly mentioned, the report calls for “deepening the reform of streamlining administration and delegating powers, combining delegating power with regulation, and optimizing services”. This is essentially a pledge to continue with the fangguanfu campaign to reduce administrative red tape and delegate more decision-making abilities to lower-level governments.

Along similar lines, the report also calls for the continuation of other efforts and campaigns to optimize the business environment, including more support for small and medium-sized enterprises, improving intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, fair competition, and strengthening China’s anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition capabilities.

Finally, the report stresses the importance of “high-quality opening”, which means actively encouraging foreign investment in areas that will help China achieve its core development goals. These, as we discuss in more detail below, include improving China’s scientific and technological self-reliance and innovation capabilities, as well as rebalancing development across different regions. Foreign companies and investors that are active in these areas, in particular, if they seek to invest in inland areas in the west and northeast, will continue to be welcome.