[People.cn]Liu Yuanchun: Promote High-quality Development With Supply-side Structural Reforms

Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. The major social contradictions in our country have turned into a contradiction between the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced development. To achieve high-quality economic development, it is necessary to implement the new development concept, solidly solve the problem of inadequate development imbalance, and continue to meet the growing needs of the people for a better life. Therefore, the promotion of high-quality economic development has become the fundamental requirement in China's current and future period to determine the development of ideas, formulation of economic policies, implementation of the basic requirements of macro-control. At this stage, the main contradiction of China's economic development has been transformed into a structural problem. The main aspect of contradiction is on the supply side, which is mainly reflected in the fact that the supply structure cannot adapt to changes in the demand structure. Therefore, it is necessary to adhere to the supply-side structural reform as the main line and promote high-quality economic development.

Since Comrade Xi Jinping first proposed supply-side structural reforms at the end of 2015, we have made remarkable achievements in structural reforms on the supply side. Macroeconomic success has been stabilized, economic structure has been greatly improved, new kinetic energy has grown rapidly, and the institutional basis for the traditional growth model has been established and effective change of the pattern of interests has been achieved, which laid a solid foundation for the high-quality economic development. To further deepen structural reform on the supply side and promote high-quality economic development, we should continue to work hard in the following areas:

Accurately locate the focus of supply-side structural reforms. The real economy is the foundation of the country’s economy, the fundamental source of wealth creation, and an important pillar of the nation’s prosperity. To deepen structural reforms on the supply side, we must focus on the development of the real economy and improve the quality of the supply system. Accelerate the development of advanced manufacturing industry, promote the deep integration of the Internet, big data, and artificial intelligence with the real economy, push forward the agglomeration of resource elements into the real economy, inclination of policy measures to the real economy, enhancement of working forces to the real economy, and create a development environment and social atmosphere of down-to-earth, hard-working, entrepreneurial, and wealthy business. We will deepen the reform of market-oriented allocation of factors, focusing on “breaking”, “establishing” and “decreasing” efforts: We will vigorously eliminate ineffective supply, vigorously cultivate new kinetic energy, and vigorously reduce the cost of real economy.

Three major fights will be played. It is a basic project to achieve high-quality development in China by fighting for the three major challenges of preventing and resolving major risks, accurately eliminating poverty, and preventing and controlling pollution. To focus on the three major challenges to deepen supply-side structural reforms, we must use structural deleveraging as the basic idea, work hard to achieve a stable and gradual decline in the macro-leverage ratio, enhance the finance’s capacity of serving real economy, and guard against the bottom line of systemic financial risks; We must focus on fulfilling the task of poverty alleviation in the most impoverished areas, and lay a solid battle against poverty; we must strictly implement regulations and standards concerning environmental protection, quality, and safety, promote cutting overcapacity, and fight against pollution prevention.

Fully mobilize the passion and initiative of local and grass-roots units to promote reforms. At present, the problems existing in the deepening supply-side structural reforms is partly due to the fact that top-level design is difficult to take into practice and reforms cannot be implemented; partly caused by overemphasize on administrative function in some areas, and “single-handedness” can easily bring sequelae. To solve these problems, an important way is to establish a sound incentive mechanism for reform and innovation so that all regions, departments and economic entities can boldly explore and open up the "last mile" of the reform.