Key takeaways from China’s 2024 parliamentary meeting: economy, environment

BEIJING – China’s annual week-long parliament session ended Monday, and for the first time in decades, the Chinese premier did not hold a news conference.

In a break with tradition, the prime minister will no longer hold a post-parliamentary press conference this year – at least until the end of the term, according to an official statement last week.

The press conferences were a rare example of press interaction with the highest levels of the Chinese government.

President Xi Jinping did not speak at the closing ceremony. He usually speaks only at the closing ceremonies of the first session of each National People’s Congress, the country’s highest government body, which is elected every five years. The second session of the 14th National People’s Congress will be held this year.

To be clear, the annual senior management meeting is typically ceremonial in nature. Real power lies with the ruling Communist Party, led by Xi, who is the party’s general secretary and China’s president.

However, statements made during the Congress may shed some light on government policies.

Here are some highlights of what was announced during this year’s week-long sitting of Parliament, which began on Tuesday last week and ended on Monday.

“Along with extensive discussions on environmental issues, the Government Work Report (GWR) explicitly pledges to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by approximately -2.5% in 2024,” Citi analysts wrote in a report on Sunday.

The report “did not set such numerical targets for 2022-23 after the -3.0% target and its campaign-style implementation led to blackouts in 2021,” the analysts said.

But they warned that investors “need to be mindful of the risks to growth arising again from potential tightening of environmental policies.”

China has set an economic growth target of around 5% for 2024, Premier Li Qiang said at the start of Tuesday’s meeting as he released a long-awaited government performance report.

Supporting industry is clearly high on Beijing’s list of priorities for the coming year, according to three major plans unveiled during parliamentary sessions.

The chief economic planner also noted that equipment upgrades would create a market worth more than 5 trillion yuan (about $694.5 billion).

Real estate, on the other hand, received less attention.

However, the Minister of Housing and Urban and Rural Development said developers “who should go bankrupt should go bankrupt”. At a press conference on Saturday, Ni Hong warned that those who “harm the interests of the masses” will be investigated and punished.

The Chinese Communist Party has tightened its grip on the government under Xi Jinping.

At the 2023 Diet meeting, Beijing announced an overhaul of finance and technology regulation, creating party commissions to oversee the two sectors. Xi Jinping also won an unprecedented third term as president at last year’s meeting.

This year, China’s National People’s Congress approved changes aimed at overhauling the structure of the State Council, which was the government’s highest executive body headed by the prime minister. At the ceremonial closing on Monday, the amended organic law of the State Council was adopted by 2,883 votes of delegates – eight voted against the amendments and nine abstained.

The changes include vice premiers and the head of the People’s Bank of China on the board’s top leadership team.

It was not immediately clear what impact such changes would have.

— CNBC’s Clement Tan contributed to this story.