The current overall performance of China's economy has been favorable. Since the beginning of this year, the economy has achieved a good start, laying a solid foundation for successfully completing the main annual economic and social development goals and tasks and embarking smoothly on the new journey of the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. In the first quarter, the gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 5.0% year-on-year, with multiple economic indicators exceeding expectations. Foreign trade performance was particularly notable, with the total value of goods trade imports and exports reaching 11.84 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15%. Industrial production grew rapidly, with value-added of industries above a designated scale increasing by 6.1% year-on-year, and over 80% of the 41 major industrial sectors achieving growth. The service sector maintained a stable and positive development trend, contributing 63.2% to economic growth and becoming a key engine driving economic expansion. Price levels rose moderately, with the national consumer price index (CPI) increasing by 0.9% year-on-year, and some categories showing significant price increases. Latest data show that from January to April this year, the national economy maintained stable and progressive development. The value-added of industries above a designated scale increased by 5.6% year-on-year; the national service sector production index grew by 4.9% year-on-year; total retail sales of consumer goods reached 16,494.1 billion yuan, up 1.9% year-on-year; total goods imports and exports amounted to 16,225.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14.9%; and the national consumer price index rose by 0.9% year-on-year.
New drivers of economic growth continue to strengthen. On one hand, high-tech industries play a prominent leading and supporting role. In foreign trade, emerging industries such as new energy vehicles and lithium-ion batteries continue to grow rapidly, demonstrating strong resilience and vitality. In industrial production, high-end equipment manufacturing shows robust development momentum, the pace of manufacturing transformation and upgrading accelerates, and the role of technological innovation in driving economic growth continues to strengthen. On the other hand, the service sector's contribution to national economic growth is becoming increasingly significant. As China's economic development level continues to rise, service consumption growth outpaces goods consumption, which aligns with economic development patterns.
While China's economy continues its stable and positive trend, various risks and challenges must be acknowledged. Externally, the international political and economic landscape remains highly uncertain, potentially bringing external shocks to economic growth. Internally, the contradiction between strong supply and weak demand remains prominent, and the domestic economy faces certain difficulties and challenges.
Regarding the view that China's economic growth has entered an "era of 4%," it is argued that this perspective is not accurate. Setting the economic growth target within a range allows sufficient room to address potential domestic and international challenges. If the international economic development environment improves overall, domestic economic restructuring progresses smoothly, and relevant institutional reform measures are effectively implemented, China's economic growth rate this year could reach or even slightly exceed 5%. Thanks to the continuous optimization and adjustment of the economic structure in recent years, China's economic scale has steadily expanded, allowing it to respond to external uncertainties with its own development certainty.
To ensure the smooth achievement of the annual economic growth target, continuous efforts are needed in areas such as technological innovation, structural optimization, and consumption upgrading to cultivate and strengthen new drivers of development. Simultaneously, strengthening the coordination of macroeconomic policies will create a more favorable macro environment for sustaining stable and positive economic growth, especially for steady investment recovery.
The so-called "China economic slowdown theory" propagated by some Western media is fundamentally untenable, as it fails to grasp the overall picture of China's economic development and overlooks the internal drivers and immense potential of Chinese economic growth. In recent years, the endogenous growth momentum of China's economy has continuously strengthened. On one hand, high-tech industries, represented by artificial intelligence, have developed rapidly, injecting strong momentum into industrial transformation and upgrading and enabling China to overtake in certain related fields. On the other hand, economic structural adjustments and market-oriented reforms have deepened, reforms in factor market allocation have continued, and the construction of a unified national market has accelerated, promoting the optimal allocation of production factors across regions and industries and significantly improving factor utilization efficiency. By optimizing incremental growth and revitalizing existing resources, China's economic development potential will be further stimulated.
Although there remains a gap between China's development level and some advanced economies, its development potential is vast. It is essential to learn from the advanced experiences of developed countries while also grounding efforts in China's actual conditions, using technological innovation as a guide, structural adjustment as a focus, and deepening reforms as a driving force to promote higher-quality and more sustainable economic development. In response to foreign media's erroneous narratives, the academic community should conduct in-depth research based on China's economic development realities, comprehensively and objectively explain the challenges and strong endogenous momentum of the Chinese economy in international exchanges, and enhance the international community's rational understanding of China's economy.
During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, China's economic development will exhibit new trends, with significant changes observable in four aspects. First, new technologies represented by artificial intelligence will activate new growth drivers. In recent years, China's rapid development in artificial intelligence has become an important force driving industrial upgrading and economic growth. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, artificial intelligence will deeply empower China's economic development, with its importance far exceeding that of the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. Second, the driving role of consumption in the overall economy will continue to manifest, particularly with service consumption becoming a key focus for stimulating growth. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, exports will remain an important pillar of China's economy, while expanding domestic demand has become a strategic foundation for promoting economic structural adjustment and achieving high-quality development. New drivers of domestic consumption will primarily rely on the development of the service sector. The National Service Industry Conference held in April this year clarified the important role of the service sector in boosting consumption, optimizing structure, improving people's livelihoods, and expanding employment, which is conducive to building societal consensus and creating a favorable environment for the healthy development of the service industry. Third, challenges from demographic changes present new issues. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, population aging and declining birth rates will deepen, and the demographic dividend in terms of quantity will tend to decrease, necessitating comprehensive measures to release the quality dividend of human capital. For example, improving the fertility support policy system, accelerating the construction of a fertility-friendly society; increasing investment in public services such as education and healthcare to strengthen human capital investment; optimizing the efficiency of human resource allocation, accelerating the process of new urbanization, promoting orderly and reasonable population mobility, and facilitating precise labor transfer. Fourth, the international political and economic environment is undergoing profound and complex changes. The world today is experiencing unprecedented changes, with intensified international turbulence and frequent regional conflicts in recent years disrupting global industrial and supply chains and impacting global economic development. China actively participates in global economic governance, unswervingly advances high-level opening-up, continuously relaxes market access in the service sector, reduces the negative list for foreign investment, and introduces a series of opening-up measures in fields such as telecommunications, education, and healthcare. The Hainan Free Trade Port has achieved island-wide customs closure operations, expected to generate a batch of replicable and scalable open innovation experiences that will gradually be promoted nationwide. These measures inject new momentum into China's high-quality economic development.
The impact of economic momentum transformation on employment and income depends mainly on two factors: speed and structure. Sustained economic growth is a prerequisite for steady increases in residents' income. If China's economy maintains an average annual growth rate of around 5%, the target of creating over 12 million new urban jobs is achievable. Structurally, capital-intensive industries play a prominent role in driving economic growth but have relatively limited capacity to boost employment and residents' income; labor-intensive industries are more conducive to achieving synchronized growth in the economy, employment, and income. Currently, against the backdrop of declining employment scale in the primary and secondary industries, the service sector has become an important support for absorbing employment and increasing residents' income in China, as well as a major area for promoting employment among the agricultural migrant population. The service sector exhibits significant labor-intensive characteristics. Accelerating the development of the service industry, especially consumer services, can effectively increase the proportion of labor remuneration, laying an income foundation for expanding domestic demand and boosting consumption. At the same time, multiple measures are needed to address the impact of economic structural adjustment on employment. Strengthening re-employment skills training, actively developing new job positions, and improving the social security system are essential. Efforts should focus on expanding the coverage of social security and social welfare, gradually extending protection policies such as minimum living guarantees, low-rent housing, and public rental housing to migrant populations with local employment experience and social security payment records, allowing them equal access to urban public services. Further improving the unemployment insurance system and raising unemployment insurance benefit standards are also necessary.
From a historical perspective, humanity has experienced multiple rounds of major technological revolutions over the past 100 years. Each time new technologies emerged, they triggered unemployment anxieties, but there has never been a case where major technological progress led to a long-term rise in unemployment rates. Locally, artificial intelligence does impact employment, especially for standardized repetitive tasks that are more easily replaceable by AI. However, current macro data do not show significant overall employment impacts from artificial intelligence. For individuals, two things are important: first, proactively cultivate skills that cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence, particularly comprehension, communication, expression, and aesthetic abilities, which are complementary to AI and conducive to human-machine collaboration; second, for practitioners in industries with overcapacity, early preparation for transition is advisable. Expecting to work in one company or industry for a lifetime is no longer realistic in today's context.
Looking ahead to the consumption development trend during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, it can be understood from two dimensions: total volume and structure. In terms of total volume, as the economy continues to develop and residents' income steadily increases, consumption scale will grow correspondingly. Structurally, industrial goods consumption will gradually slow down, while the driving role of service consumption in consumption growth will become increasingly prominent. Currently, there are still some shortcomings in the supply side of service consumption in China. Supply in areas such as education, healthcare, elderly care, and childcare remains insufficient, and the quality of supply struggles to fully meet people's needs. The convenience and adaptability of consumption scenarios are inadequate, with relatively scarce supply for elderly-friendly consumption and insufficient supply of new consumption scenarios such as cultural entertainment and sports leisure for young people, where the experiential aspect needs improvement. For example, some large commercial complexes suffer from severe homogenization, lacking in business diversity, facility experience, and refined services such as elderly-friendliness, child-friendliness, and pet-friendliness, which suppresses the vitality of offline service consumption. To further unleash consumption potential and strengthen service consumption, continuous efforts are needed on the supply side, increasing the supply of service facilities, relaxing unreasonable industry regulations, adapting to the trend of residents' service consumption upgrading, and promoting the quality improvement and expansion of service consumption.
Income growth is the source of confidence for consumption boosting. This year's Government Work Report explicitly states the "implementation of a plan to increase urban and rural residents' income." To promote residents' income growth, efforts should focus on two main areas. First, vigorously develop the service sector. The service industry is a typical labor-intensive industry, playing a stronger role in creating employment and increasing residents' income compared to manufacturing. In 2025, the added value of China's service sector accounted for 57.7% of GDP, and this proportion is expected to increase further in the future. Second, improve the social security system. A sound social security system can enhance welfare protection levels and income expectations. At the same time, it is necessary to improve the labor rights protection system, urge employers to strictly implement labor laws, establish a reasonable wage growth mechanism, and effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of workers.
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