The historic affirmation of Xi Jinping’s third five-year term marked the end of the China Communist Party congress on Sunday.
The focus was also on Li Qiang, his new second-in-command.
He is on course to become Premier and is charged with overseeing the second-largest economy in the world. He is Mr. Xi’s loyalist.
China revealed a batch of economic statistics on Monday that had been delayed from the previous week.
The zero-Covid policies of Beijing and the trade war with the US are only two of the difficulties China’s economy is currently facing domestically and internationally.
What have we discovered about the nation’s economy over the past week?
Slow economic growth
Due to growing worries that Mr. Xi will continue to pursue his ideology-driven policies at the expense of economic growth, Hong Kong stocks fell on Monday, and the yuan, the Chinese currency, declined against the US dollar.
The shares of Chinese technological goliaths Alibaba and Tencent, listed in Hong Kong, plummeted sharply, causing the Hang Seng index to drop by more than 6%. The Shanghai Composite index ended the day 2% lower in China’s core.
In the meantime, official data revealed that China’s GDP expanded by 3.9% from the same quarter a year ago, exceeding expectations.
It represented a significant improvement above the 0.4% growth recorded for the preceding three months while Shanghai was under lockdown.
During the congress, the release of the numbers was delayed without a justification. This led some observers of China to speculate that they might indicate economic fragility.
However, even while the most recent growth rates appear strong compared to most Western nations, they are significantly lower than the pace of expansion. China has experienced this for decades, but it is still far from the 5.5% objective for 2022 that was set in March.
After placing important cities under complete or partial lockdowns, the Politburo, the Chinese Communist Party’s top policy-making body, has since hinted that it may fail that aim.
China gets a second-in-command
According to some observers, Mr. Xi’s selections for the Politburo Standing Committee—version China’s of a presidential cabinet—showed that he values loyalty over knowledge and experience.
Li Qiang was his pick to be the party’s new second-in-command.
He will become China’s Premier next year and oversee the country’s economy. Although he had no experience serving the central government.
Li Qiang is also only five years away from the traditional retirement age for top Chinese officials.
Nevertheless, he has played a significant role in establishing a sizable Tesla factory in Shanghai. He has being managing the local economies of Zhejiang province and Shanghai.
The Premier leads the Communist party that controls China. They impact the economy by coordinating the efforts of government agencies and the central bank.
Li Keqiang, Li Qiang’s predecessor and a more moderate voice, has held the post for a decade. He will step down when his tenure ends in March.
Zero-Covid will continue in China
Before the congress, there were hopes that China might relax its strict zero-Covid policy, which has slowed economic growth.
Communist Party spokesman Sun Yeli backed the plan a day before the event started. In his opening remarks, Mr. Xi reaffirmed these ideas. He said Beijing had started a “people’s war to block the virus’s spread” and safeguarded the people’s safety.
According to Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, DC, China will soon start the “incremental process” of removing zero-Covid.
Read Also: COVID: Only China remain locked down in Asia
Additionally, there have been growing worries that China would take steps to isolate itself from the world economy.
According to Mr. Marro of the EIU, one of China’s most significant obstacles is its “fraying relations” with the US.
