China’s top leaders next month will lay out their economic strategy for the next five years that will include a new ambition to ramp up domestic consumption and make more critical technology at home in a bid to insulate the world’s second-largest economy from swirling geopolitical tensions.
Described as a strategy of "dual circulation" in recent speeches by President Xi Jinping, the plan is for a more self-reliant domestic economy to serve as China’s main growth driver, supplemented by foreign technologies and investment. While details are scant so far and much of the policy ambition is already in shape in one form or another, the speeches indicate the importance of this new policy.
On Tuesday, Xi called the concept a "systematic deep-level reform” at a meeting of the party’s central committee for deepening overall reform. The new policy is "a strategic decision made in accordance with changes in China’s development stage, environment and conditions,” he said.