Chinese economy dismays naysayers amid trade consultation with US

BEIJING - When China and the United States held the latest round of trade consultation, the Chinese economy showed steady performance and strong resilience, dismaying naysayers at a key moment of negotiation with the US side.

The country's GDP grew 6.3 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, showing that China is still a relatively fast-growing and healthy economy.

At a Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee meeting held on Tuesday, the Chinese authority assessed that the country's economy maintained steady upward momentum, with the main macroeconomic indicators remaining in the reasonable range. It will maintain the basic tune of "seeking progress while maintaining stability" for its economic work and continue to promote supply-side structural reform.

When the US side holds up the "big stick" of tariffs, some people shout "China's situation is very bad," and even fabricate false statements that "China has lost 5 million jobs." These are just a microcosm of the long-term vision of some foreign institutions or people looking at China's economy through colored glasses. These people either unilaterally exaggerate the difficulties encountered in China's economic development or turn a blind eye to the potential and resilience of China's economic development. Their remarks have been proved untenable.

Those naysayers are clearly still judging the Chinese economy by speed of growth. In fact, the Chinese economy is already in transition from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development. In the first half of this year, 7.37 million new urban jobs were created, and 19,400 new enterprises were established per day. Consumption contributed 60.1 percent to economic growth, and the tertiary industry contributed 60.3 percent to GDP growth. It is safe to say that the Chinese economy is in a stable and firm pattern, and more progress is in sight.

Over the past 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's development has gone through ups and downs, and there have been many doubts over China's growth. However, China has time and again delivered surprisingly nice growth factsheets to the world, allowing people who do not like China to re-examine and respect China.

The Political Bureau meeting has sent a positive signal to the world. Although China's current development is facing new risks and challenges with downward pressure, it has always placed more emphasis on structural adjustment and reform and opening-up rather than short-term stimulus policies, demonstrating its determination and confidence to vigorously promote high-quality development.

According to the meeting, China will continue to implement the proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy and adhere to the principle of "housing is for living in, not for speculation." Fiscal policy could be intensified and the monetary policy also has room for adjustment if necessary, therefore China has ample policy ammunition to cope with downside risks. Meanwhile, the old memories of relying on short-term speculation on real estate to stimulate economic growth are gone. Those who expect China to repeat the old growth model will be disappointed.

It is hoped that those Americans who have played and sung the aging tune over and over again will see the reality sooner rather than later. We hope they will rationally view the fundamental trend of China's long-term economic development, seize the hard-won opportunity to restart the Sino-US economic and trade consultation, show sufficient sincerity and action to implement the consensus reached at the Osaka Summit between the two heads of state and meet the Chinese side halfway. The proper attitude is to resolve the issue through dialogue rather than confrontation in order to work together to achieve win-win cooperation.