China’s Two Sessions ended this week with the National People’s Assembly approving a resolution on the government’s report, which summarizes its priorities in 2024, and the objectives to be achieved this year.
In addition to being the last year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the 2025 Two Sessions took place at the intense beginning of the year, with Donald Trump taking office for the second time and implementing an aggressive tariff policy. There is also positive news, such as the great impact of the DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence platform.
The Two Sessions are the annual meetings of the National People’s Assembly and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
The National People’s Assembly, which is the main agency of state power in China, brings together 2,929 representatives from all of the country’s provinces and regions, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
The ten areas in which the government must put more efforts to achieve a “good performance” this year are: rise in consumption, new quality of productive forces, science, education and the innovation system, economic structural reforms, opening up to trade and foreign investment, preventing systemic risks, rural revitalization, new urbanization, cutting carbon emissions and the green transition, and the well-being of the population.
In addition to the government’s own report, it is possible to detail some of these tasks based on press conferences and interviews in which BdF participated during the Two Sessions.
The first task – boosting consumption – is related to China’s level of trade surplus, a record 7 trillion yuan (almost 1 trillion dollars) last year. In an interview with BdF at the end of 2024, economist Yao Yang said that “there is a kind of urgency to accelerate the change from being an export-driven economy to one driven by domestic consumption.”
Among the specific measures approved for 2025, it was proposed to issue 300 billion yuan in special ultra-long treasury bonds and expand the supply of care for the elderly, day care centers, health services and domestic services, reducing market restrictions.
Public welfare measures: care
A press conference with three ministers and the Director of the National Health Commission was held last Sunday (11) to address the tasks of improving the population’s well-being. Each authority addressed problems and proposals in their areas, which covered health, housing, social security and care.
At the press conference, Brasil de Fato asked about the challenge of caring for the elderly, since the country’s population is declining and its average age is rising. Lu Zhiyuan, Minister of Civil Affairs, said that the triple network of care services for the elderly (municipal, urban and rural) will be intensified.
“Just as there are schools and hospitals, services for the elderly also require adequate structures” at all levels, said the minister. Secondly, the government plans to integrate and coordinate three types of care: home, community and institutional.
The country will also focus on the role of community centers and institutions to strengthen the support families receive and guarantee that services are accessible. A mechanism for collaboration between the government, the market and communities will also be designed.
With this mechanism, the government will be in charge of planning, public policy, monitoring and guaranteeing rights, the market with the expansion of the care industry and at the community level, the involvement of organizations, and volunteers and social professionals under the leadership of grassroots party organizations.
Employment
The Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, Wang Xiaopin said that, by 2025, there will be 12.22 million university graduates and “a large number of rural migrant workers who need to get stable jobs.”
As a proposal, the minister said that the government would promote large-scale training programs for workers, focusing on needed skills and public services using big data to find jobs on local markets. Both measures are aimed at optimizing the demand for and supply of jobs.
Housing Minister Ni Hong announced the goal of renovating all housing estates built before 2000, renovating more than 150,000 kilometers of underground pipes and completing 1,000 drainage and flood control projects.
Technology
Quality new productive forces and accelerating the development of a modernized industrial system have been set as the second major tasks for this year. In the most recent resolutions of the government and the communist party in China, not only are advances in essential, cutting-edge and disruptive technologies prioritized but also the adoption of new technologies throughout all industrial chains, a process known as re-engineering the industrial base.
One of the measures aimed at it is the “IA Plus” initiative to integrate digital technologies into manufacturing, such as “intelligent vehicles, robotics and 5G.”
Support for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs, “unicorn” and “gazelle” companies) and national high-tech zones is another objective. The “unicorns” are startups valued at more than US$ 1 billion before debuting on the stock exchange. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is one such case, reaching this value in 2017, just five years after it was founded. “Gazelle companies”, on the other hand, are SMEs that are growing rapidly.
Rural Revitalization
The report the government presented indicated that analyses would be carried out to determine whether policies to combat poverty have been effective. In 2020, China announced the eradication of extreme poverty. The country is ending the five-year transition period aimed at consolidating these achievements, called “rural revitalization.”
This initiative includes improvements in infrastructure, transportation, housing and public services such as education and health. During the Two Sessions, each Chinese province and region holds its own meeting to discuss the government’s report and its set goals and identify challenges for the year.
At the Shandong province delegation meeting, representative Wang Yinxiang said that young people need to be incorporated into the rural revitalization process.
“Our approach to attracting and retaining talent is simple: We don’t need to own them, we just use them. If an expert – no matter where they come from – can give a talk in our village or offer a suggestion, we already consider him or her part of our team,” says Wang Yinxiang.
As well as discussing rural revitalization, she also advocated the expansion of organic farming as an essential part of sustainable development.
“We focus on creating a circular, organic agricultural system that is sustainable and capable of feeding China’s 1.4 billion people. We know that environmental pollution and excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have affected food security. That’s why we advocate organic farming as a natural and healthy alternative.”
Whole-Process People’s Democracy
China’s political system is called Whole-Process People’s Democracy. This concept refers to a system where people’s participation is not restricted to the electoral process but takes place through consultation, deliberation and decision-making.
“Democracy in China is an integral process, which fully values the opinions of people from all social classes and sectors of society, allowing everyone to understand and participate. I am a representative of the peasants. I come from grassroots movements,” explains Wang.
Lu Xinyu, an academic at East China Normal University (ECNU), says that the system is not conflict-oriented but results-oriented. The Two Sessions “is not a game for politicians to win votes. Discussions between politicians in parliament don’t mean democracy. It means that democracy alone doesn’t solve problems,” explains Lu.
