Economic growth shows sign of picking up

How will China's economy fare? This is not just the concern of the Chinese people but also that of the world as China has long been contributing 30 percent of the global growth. This concern has become even more intense when the repeated resurgences of COVID-19 seem to have shifted the work emphasis of China's governments at all levels from the economy to prevention and control of the epidemic.

However, the statistics for May that the National Bureau of Statistics released suggest that the country's economy has taken a turn for the better. The index of industries above the designated size increased by 0.7 percent year-on-year. Although still weak it is a marked improvement on the decrease of 2.9 percent year-on-year in April. Almost all the figures are better than those in April when the country's biggest metropolis Shanghai was locked down.

The suspension of economic activities in many parts of the country meant the data was terrible in April and there was little sign of recovery in early May.

If such a situation continued, it would be very hard for the country to realize the goal of 5.5 percent economic growth for this year.

At this juncture, a national conference on economic policies was convened in May, releasing 33 policies to stabilize the economy and promote economic growth. The State Council, the country's Cabinet, has sent teams to 12 provincial-level regions to make sure that these policies are well implemented.

As far as the implementation of policies is concerned, the focus has been placed on the measures to help enterprises, the medium-sized and small ones in particular, overcome problems such as the lack of funds, the burden of taxes and problematic supply of raw materials because of impeded logistics.

Efforts have been made to ensure that tax cuts can really benefit enterprises. The data show that the tax cuts and exemption of fees on enterprises amounted to more than 2 trillion yuan ($299 billion) in the past more than five months.

At the same time, COVID-19 control measures are required to be reasonably implemented to guarantee the smooth flow of logistics and unreasonable requirements for the nucleic acid testing for truck drivers have been scrapped.

As a result, the manufacturing sector realized an increase of 0.1 percent year-on-year in May, while the figure was negative in April.

With the repeated resurgences of COVID-19, policies may need to be further adjusted to reduce the impact of epidemic control on the development of the economy. If control policies are coordinated well with smooth running of the economy, China still has the hope of realizing its goal of 5.5 percent growth.