Beijing (AFP)-Beijing, ChinaPremier Li Keqiang warned that the coronavirus, a housing collapse and the Ukraine crisis were all going to make the future a lot worse. On Saturday, China set its lowest annual GDP goal in decades.
Li set an extremely modest goal of roughly 5.5 percent growth for 2022 in his annual address to China’s rubber-stamp legislature – the lowest level since 1991 – in his annual address to China’s rubber-stamp legislature.
Addressing over 3,000 members of the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing’s cavernous Great Hall of the People, Li said that the world’s second-largest economy “would face many more dangers and obstacles, which we must continue to conquer.”
The goal was set in response to the need to preserve secure employment, meet basic living expenses, and “avoid risks,” Li said in China’s equivalent of a state of the country speech.
China’s economy is a critical engine of global development and is particularly critical domestically for the governing Communist Party, whose legitimacy is predicated on sustained economic progress and rising living standards.
The party is very concerned that its huge population could become unstable if the economy doesn’t move quickly for a long time.
