A visitor experiences an industrial internet system at the 2019 International Conference on Industrial Internet in Qingdao, Shandong province, on July 25. [Photo/Xinhua]
Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He has underscored integrating the expansion of domestic demand with supply-side structural reform, which experts said delivered a key signal that more coordinated policy efforts are in the pipeline to strengthen the country's pursuit of high-quality development.
Achieving an integration of the strategy to expand domestic demand and deepening supply-side structural reform is a "major strategic move" and a long-term plan to rise to changes in the external and domestic environment and boost developmental autonomy, Liu said in an article published in People's Daily on Friday.
The integration means that the country will align the demand and supply-side efforts with the requirements of high-quality development, Liu said. A balance between effective demand and effective supply should be achieved, where demand expands in areas that satisfy people's needs while the quality and efficiency of the supply system are lifted to meet the demand.
According to Liu, such integration has become necessary amid shrinking international demand, decreasing stability of the global supply of energy and resources, and attempts of some economies to decouple from China. Domestically, the problem of demand contraction has converged with the weakening of the advantages in labor and land.
While China has been advancing supply-side structural reform and expanding demand for years, experts said the latest proposal to integrate them indicates that policy coordination may strengthen to accelerate both of the processes, in order to safeguard the country's momentum of high-quality development as external challenges rise.
Cai Zhibing, an associate professor of economics at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said policies of different sectors may coordinate deeply to push high-quality development. For instance, the country may promote education system reform to facilitate industrial upgrading, instead of merely using industrial policies to advance the process.
In pursuing the integration, deepening supply-side structural reform remains the mainstay as supply creates demand in the long run, the vice-premier said, noting that the country will step up efforts to address the weak links that are highly reliant on external supplies.
Fiscal and monetary policies should be used when demand is insufficient and market expectations are unstable, but only in an appropriate manner that shuns flooding the market with stimulus, Liu said.
Bigger steps will be made to deepen reforms, optimize the allocation of production factors and promote structural adjustments, and the country will expand opening-up to attract more quality production factors, including capital, technology and talent, Liu added.
Long Haibo, a senior researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, said Liu's article pictured the path of high-quality development as part of the country's modernization drive, implying that macroeconomic policy may remain stable while reforms may deepen in terms of production factor flows and market player development.
