EU to benefit from China's 13th Five-Year Plan: Chinese ambassador

BRUSSELS - Europe is expected to benefit from the implementation of China's new five-year development plan, said Head of Chinese Mission to the European Union (EU) Yang Yanyi on Thursday.

Successfully implemented, the 13th Five-Year Plan, the country's economic and social development blueprint for the 2016-2020 period, will facilitate the EU's effort to set its recovery on a sustainable path, Yang said at the European Parliament.

The 13th Five-Year Plan, to put China on a qualitative and more sustainable growth trajectory and further galvanize global growth, will be favorable for the 28-country bloc to unlock investment, foster productivity and accelerate the process of convergence, Yang said.

China set its gross domestic product (GDP) growth target in a range of 6.5 percent to 7 percent this year in the plan, trying to restructure its economy into a more sustainable one driven by domestic consumption and service sectors.

The shift will lead to rising demand by China, which is a huge market with the population of over 1.3 billion people, for imports of consumer goods and services, and help boost the EU's exports to China, the ambassador said.

The world's second largest economy, according to the plan, will speed up the implementation of its free trade strategy, which is supposed to boost negotiations on investment agreement between China and the EU as well as moving towards broader ambitions including China-EU free trade agreement.

Meanwhile, European companies will enjoy more opportunities to use their technological forte to gain foothold in the Chinese market including in such areas as innovation, connectivity, information technologies, urbanization, finance, clean energy, services and circular economy, the ambassador said.

China and the EU are both major partners to tackle climate change. In the 13th Five-Year Plan, China outlined ambitious target to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 18 percent by 2020.

China's moving toward a cleaner, greener model of economy will have big implications for the environment and China-EU cooperation on climate change, Yang said.

China has set 2020 as the target year to realize the first "centenary goal" of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, pledging efforts to double GDP and per capita personal income from the 2010 level.

The five-year plan aims to keep medium-high growth in the next five years. By 2020, the size of China's economy is expected to exceed 90 trillion yuan ($13.8 trillion), compared with 67.7 trillion yuan in 2015.

In March, Chinese lawmakers voted in favor of the five-year plan during the annual session of the National People's Congress.